Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the number of Access to Work decisions that have not aligned with Access to Work guidelines in the last 12 months.

We have interpreted “Access to Work decisions that have not aligned with Access to Work guidelines” as cases where a customer has challenged a decision and requested a reconsideration.

From November 2024 to October 2025:

• 1,517 reconsideration requests were received.
• 1,008 of these have been reviewed and cleared.
• Of those reviewed, 159 decisions were partially or fully overturned.

Some overturned decisions will be due to customers providing additional information, rather than the decision not aligning with Access to Work guidelines. We do not hold data that identifies how many overturned decisions were specifically due to misalignment with the guidelines. The remaining 509 cases are still under consideration

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics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.