Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what criteria his Department used to select the pilot areas for the WorkWell programme.

The 15 WorkWell pilot areas, which were announced on 7 May, will receive funding to locally design and lead their integrated work and health support services to meet the needs of their local populations. Pilot areas will be engaging end users, including disabled people, in the design and delivery of these services.

The lessons we learn from WorkWell will be critical to our longer-term work and will bolster the evidence base around what works to support disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work.

Prospective WorkWell pilot areas submitted applications which were scored against four criteria published in the WorkWell Prospectus on gov.uk (www.gov.uk/government/publications/workwell):​

- Their understanding of the geography and demography of their chosen footprint;

- Their approach to work and health strategy integration;

- Their proposed delivery model for their WorkWell service;

- Their experience of and approach to, governance and working effectively with delivery partners across local systems.

In addition, a decision was taken to ensure that at least one site was selected in each of the 7 NHS England regions, and at least two of the 15 areas would be classified as predominantly rural.

The Department has commissioned an independent consortium of evaluators to carry out a national evaluation of WorkWell that will look to measure the effectiveness of the pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success.