Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of the total caseload for UC LCWRA and ESA Support Group participated in Additional Work Coach Time in the most recent (a) month and (b) financial year for which data is available; and what estimate she has made of what that proportion will be for financial year 2026-27.

Additional Work Coach Support provides disabled people and people with health impairments increased one-to-one personalised support from their work coach to help them move towards, and into, work.

Last month, June 2025, 900 LCWRA claimants voluntarily started AWCT support. Since AWCT started in June 2022, there have been over 14,000 LCWRA starts to the programme. There would be, however, a disproportionate cost to providing the number of starts for the financial year 2024/25. There would be a need to retrieve data for a period when AWCT wasn’t targeted at the LCWRA group, and assessments of the accuracy of this data would need to be made. There would also be a disproportionate cost to providing AWCT data on claimants in the ESA Support Group due to difficulties with data collection for this group.

The latest publicly available data shows the LCWRA caseload was 1.93 million in March 2025 and the ESA Support Group caseload was 1.23 million in November 2024. However, the AWCT starts figure is cumulative since 2022, so it would be misleading to give AWCT starts as a percentage of the total current caseload.

We will be rolling out our new support offer from next April (2026) when our benefit changes start to come in so that everyone affected by the reduction to the UC health element will be offered support, provided by a dedicated Pathways to Work adviser. These 1000 Pathways to Work Advisers will build and expand on existing measures like additional work coach support to provide one-to-one personalised support to more disabled customers and those with health conditions to help them move towards, and into, work. Pathways to Work Advisers will support claimants on Universal Credit (UC) who are awaiting their Work Capability Assessment and those who have been found to have ‘limited capability for work’ or ‘limited capability for work and work-related activity’ who want, or could benefit from, more help to move into work. They can also support Employment Support Allowance (ESA) claimants.

People affected will be able to access a conversation about their needs, goals and aspirations; offered one-to-one follow-on support, and given help to access additional work, health and skills support that can meet their needs. This will include:

• Access to specialist local Supported Employment provision across England and Wales for individuals that are disabled, have health conditions or other complex barriers to employment through Connect to Work, which in 2026/27 will support around 100,000 people.
• Support through local Trailblazers and the WorkWell initiative, which will be available in around half of England and parts of Wales. In other areas, we will work to draw on health, skills and wider services and to put in place additional provision where this is needed.

Pathways to Work adviser support will be in place across England, Scotland and Wales for all those affected by the changes from April. We will be working with governments in Scotland and Wales to join up support where elements of policy and funding are devolved. We are beginning testing of our new support conversation this year (summer 2025). There will be additional funding of £200 million to support people next year (2026/27), building to £1 billion a year by 2029/30 as reforms fully roll out.

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