Employment and Support Allowance: incapacity benefits reassessment
Information on the benefit conversions, which have taken place through reassessment of pre-existing incapacity benefit claims.
Since 30 April 2013 the Department for Work & Pensions has combined these 2 publications:
- Employment and Support Allowance - Work Capability Assessments, Great Britain – new claims
- Employment and Support Allowance - Incapacity Benefits Reassessment: Work Capability Assessments.
These shall continue to be released as one publication, Employment and Support Allowance: outcomes of Work Capability Assessment, on a quarterly basis.
ESA claimants go through a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) process. The item shows the statistics on:
- volumes for outcomes of completed assessments, and claims closed before the assessment and those still in progress
- percentages for outcomes of completed assessments only
DWP has revised the presentation of this publication to make the figures easier to understand and to provide more and clearer context to those with limited knowledge of the benefit system. The underlying content in the accompanying tables is the same as that in pre-2012 issues.
Background to the benefit
On 27 October 2008, pre-existing benefits paid on grounds of incapacity and disability, that is Incapacity Benefit (IB), Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA) and Income Support (IS), were replaced with ESA for all new claimants.
Background to conversion
Reassessments started with trials in the Aberdeen and Burnley areas in October 2010. These trials provided an indication of claimant and staff reactions to the assessment process. The national roll-out started with a limited introductory phase at the end of February 2011 and reached full scale in April 2011.
Contacts and more information
There is contact information and more about DWP statistics on the Statistics at DWP page.