Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 5 July 2022 to Question 28414 on Access to Work Programme, how many applications to their Department's Access to Work Scheme are outstanding as of 5 September 2022; and what steps their Department are taking to tackle those outstanding applications.

The Department's Access to Work Scheme had 25,101 applications outstanding as of 5 September 2022.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.  

Access to Work (AtW) are currently receiving an increased level of applications for support and are working through all applications to ensure that they are progressed as soon as possible, as well as recruiting new team members to increase capacity.

For applications where a customer is due to begin a new job in the next 4 weeks (whether employed or self-employed), their case will be prioritised, and contact made as soon as possible. Renewal applications for on-going support are also being prioritised and in the majority of cases, support approved using a new streamlined process.

All other Case Managers are deployed to work on the oldest outstanding cases and overtime working for AtW staff is also being used.