Official Statistics

Access to Work statistics: April 2007 to March 2022

Published 20 October 2022

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

The latest release of these statistics can be found in the collection of Access to Work statistics.

Main stories

The key points from this release covering Access to Work in the financial year 2021 to 2022 are:

• Access to Work provision was approved for 37,710 people
• Total expenditure on Access to Work was £149.9 million
• 38,620 people were in receipt of an Access to Work payment

What is Access to Work?

Access to Work is a publicly funded employment support programme that aims to help more disabled people start or stay in work. There are 2 main types of Access to Work provision:

• ‘Assessments’
• ‘Elements’

Assessments involve exploring workplace-related barriers to employment and making recommendations on how these can be overcome. In some but not all cases the outcome of an Assessment may be to recommend the provision of one or more Elements.

Elements are intended to supplement the reasonable adjustments that employers are required to make under the Equality Act 2010. The types of Element that can be provided are categorised as follows:

• Communication Support for Interviews
• Special Aids and Equipment
• Adaptations to Premises
• Adaptations to Vehicles
• Travel to Work (help with the costs of travelling to work)
• Travel in Work (help with the costs of work-related travel)
• Support Worker
• Mental Health Support Service
• Miscellaneous

In some but not all cases an Assessment is required to find out whether a customer is eligible to receive an Element.

What do these statistics show?

These statistics are about 2 specific parts of the Access to Work customer journey:

• approval of Access to Work provision
• payment of Access to Work provision

They show the number of people who had Access to Work provision approved, the number of people who received at least one Access to Work payment and Access to Work expenditure. These are disaggregated by various breakdowns including:

• financial year
• type of provision
• primary medical condition
• region
• age
• gender

When interpreting results, particularly comparing time periods, users should be aware of the potential effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic between 2020 and 2022.

The expenditure data in these statistics covers Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) expenditure only. In many cases, the employer will be asked to contribute to the cost of provision under “cost share” arrangements. The employer element of expenditure is not included in these statistics. We use this data to calculate statistics on the number of people in receipt of Access to Work payments in each year.

Access to Work continued to provide Communication Support for Interviews to individuals during 2020 to 2021. However, due to the Access to Work digital transformation programme and the move to a new administrative system, we are unable to identify how many people received a payment for Communication Support for Interviews in 2020 to 2021. Data is available for 2021 to 2022, which shows 190 people received a payment for Communication Support for Interviews.

Access to Work customer journey

The main stages of a typical Access to Work customer journey are summarised here.

1. Application: The customer applies for Access to Work grant funding.

2. Approval/Rejection: DWP approves or rejects the application after considering the customer’s eligibility and their employer’s duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010: If a customer knows their support requirements, an award will be put in place. But if the customer does not know what support they need, they will be asked to undergo an holistic assessment to ascertain their support needs.

3. Decision: When a decision is made the customer is notified of the grant and the level of funding. The funding may cover some or all of the costs of the support needs.

4. Commissioning: The customer or their employer will use the grant funding to commission the approved provision and submits invoices relating to approved grants to DWP.

5. Receipt: The customer receives notification of the approved funding and payment.

6. Payment: DWP pays the invoices relating to approved grants. In some cases, a DWP payment is not required, for example because the provision can be provided at no cost or the employer covers the relevant costs.

7. Review: During the award period DWP will schedule reviews to ensure the provision is still adequate and to check that the customer is still eligible.

8. Renewal: At the end of their award period customers are invited to renewal their claim if necessary.

Access to Work approvals in 2021 to 2022

Access to Work (AtW) provision was approved for 37,710 people.

Number of people who had any Access to Work provision of each type approved in 2020 to 2021

The key points are:

• of the 37,710 people who had an AtW provision approved in 2021 to 2022, 36,790 (98%) had an Element approved. The remaining 2% had one or more Assessments approved in 2021 to 2022 without any Elements approved in the same period. This may be because they had one or more Elements approved in a subsequent period or they did not require an Element or were not eligible for one
• 12,530 (33%) of those who had an AtW provision approved in 2021 to 2022 had an Assessment approved
• the remaining 67% had an Element approved without an Assessment approved in the same period. This is mainly because the corresponding Assessment was approved in a preceding period, for example if the Element is a series of ongoing payments as seen with Travel to Work
• data relating to previous years can be found in the accompanying spreadsheet in Table 1

Support Worker Elements were approved for more people than any other type of Element.

Number of people who had any Element of each type approved in 2021 to 2022

The key points are:

• the most common Element that was approved in 2021 to 2022 was the Support Worker Element. 48% of the 36,790 people who had any Element approved had one or more Support Worker Elements approved in the same period
• the next most frequently approved Element types were:
  • Special Aids and Equipment (35%)
  • Mental Health Support Service (26%)
  • Travel to Work (16%)
• it should be noted that more than one Element of the same type or of different types can be approved for the same person in a given financial year
• it should also be noted that an approval for Access to Work does not necessarily result in a payment for Access to Work, as a customer’s employer may pay for the support in full, or the customer may choose not to take up the support
• data relating to previous years can be found in the accompanying spreadsheet in Table 2

Access to Work expenditure over time

Total nominal expenditure on Access to Work was £149.9 million in 2021 to 2022.

Expenditure on Access to Work provision 2009 to 2022 in millions (Nominal terms)

The key points are:

• total nominal expenditure on Access to Work provision increased to £149.9 million in 2021 to 2022, its highest total
• £147.7 million of this was expenditure on Elements. The remaining £2.2 million was on Assessments. Assessments account for around 1% of total expenditure
• nominal expenditure is the amount reflected on financial balance sheets. It does not account for inflation; therefore, real terms expenditure should be used for year on year comparisons
• see Table 11 for full data, and Table 12 for expenditure on Elements of each type in the accompanying spreadsheet

Expenditure on Access to Work provision, 2009 to 2022 (Real terms)

The key points are:

• real terms expenditure removes the effect of inflation to make year on year comparisons possible, using 2021 to 2022 as the base year
• in the last year, real total expenditure increased by 37% and is now at a similar level to 2019 to 2020. This change might have been driven by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the previous financial year. Expenditure changes differed for different elements, which is explained in sections below
• see statistics on the number of people who received a payment by element type
• see Table 11a of the accompanying spreadsheet for more details

More information

We use expenditure data from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Service Client (DiSC) administrative system. This provides granularity (for example, expenditure broken down by provision type), but we reweight this data to match the total Access to Work expenditure recorded through the department’s Single Operating Platform (SOP). SOP is the payment system used for much of the department’s business.

SOP provides a more reliable measure of spend than DiSC however the data cannot always be disaggregated to the same level of detail as that in DiSC. Please see the accompanying Background information and methodology note for more detail.

Number in receipt of payment of Access to Work over time

38,620 people were in receipt of Access to Work payments in 2021 to 2022.

Number of people who were in receipt of one or more payments for any Access to Work provision of each type, 2009 to 2022

The key points are:

• there was a 2% increase in the number of people who received a payment for Access to Work provision in 2021 to 2022 when compared to the previous year
• the number of people who received a payment for an Assessment fell by 6% in 2021 to 2022 when compared to the previous year
• of the 38,620 people who received a payment for Access to Work provision in 2021 to 2022, 29,440 (76%) received the payment for one or more Elements. The remaining 24% received a payment for an Assessment only, without receiving a payment for any Elements in the same period. This may be because they received a payment for one or more Elements in a subsequent period or they did not require an Element or were not eligible for one
• of those who received a payment for Access to Work provision in 2021 to 2022, 12,380 (32%) received a payment for one or more Assessments. The remaining 68% received a payment for an Element only, without receiving a payment for an Assessment. This may be where the customer received the assessment in a preceding period or when an assessment was not required
• see Table 6 of the accompanying spreadsheet for full data

More people were in receipt of a payment for Support Workers than any other type of Element.

Number of people who received a payment for any Access to Work Element of each type, 2012 to 2022

The key points are:

• The Support Worker Element continues to be the most common Element amongst people who received a payment, having increased by 14% in 2021 to 2022 compared with 2020 to 2021
• Mental Health Support Service has been rising since 2015 to 2016, increasing from 1,030 to 8,550 in 2021 to 2022, and is now the second most common element. In the last year, the number of people who received a payment for Mental Health Support Service rose by 14%
• Travel to Work had the third highest number of people who received a payment. However, numbers receiving Travel to Work continued to fall, with a decrease of 10% in 2021 to 2022 when compared to the previous year
• see Table 7 of the accompanying spreadsheet for full data

Characteristics of Access to Work customers in 2021 to 2022

Percentage of total expenditure and percentage in receipt of payment in 2021 to 2022 by primary medical condition

The key points are:

• the largest Access to Work customer group in terms of number of payments, by primary medical condition are those with a ‘Mental health condition’, who account for 24% (9,080) of the total number of customers. Those with the primary medical condition ‘Deaf or hard of hearing’ are the second most common group and make up 13% of customers (5,180 people)
• those who are ‘Deaf and hard of hearing’ are in receipt of the highest proportion (39%) of total Access to Work expenditure
• see Tables 8 and 13 of the accompanying spreadsheet for full data

Access to Work continues to support young people as well as those customers who are older.

Percentage of people in receipt of a payment in 2021 to 2022 in each age group

The key points are:

• the largest Access to Work customer group in terms of number of payments, by age are those aged 45 to 54 who account for 25% of the total number of customers
• people of all eligible ages are in receipt of Access to Work support
• see Table 8 of the accompanying spreadsheet for full data

More information about these statistics

These statistics have been developed using guidelines set out by the UK Statistics Authority and are new official statistics undergoing development. They have therefore been designated as experimental statistics. We plan to publish these statistics on an annual basis and will explore the feasibility of expanding their scope to cover other parts of the Access to Work customer journey such as applications to Access to Work. Users are invited to comment on the development and relevance of these statistics at this stage and can send feedback to: access.toworkstatistics@dwp.gov.uk

These statistics were obtained from DWP’s Disability Service Client (DiSC) administrative system and other DWP systems. DiSC is a live system and figures may be revised in future publications as records are amended or added to the system. More information about DiSC and revisions to these statistics can be found in the accompanying Background information and methodology note.

Figures in this publication are rounded to the nearest 10 and nearest £1,000. Percentages are calculated using figures prior to rounding and are rounded to the nearest integer. Totals may not sum due to rounding or missing data.

Where to find out more

More information about these statistics can be found in the Background information and methodology note and the Data tables that accompany each release.

Read more information about Access to Work.

Guidance on Access to Work for employers.

More information about experimental statistics.

Contact details

For queries or feedback on this publication, please contact: access.toworkstatistics@dwp.gov.uk

For press queries, please contact: 0203 267 5129

ISBN: 978-1-78659-472-3

Next release

This publication is annual and the next release will be published in August or September 2023.