Employment and Support Allowance: Work Capability Assessment

• Get help with PDFs
• Get Microsoft's Excel viewer

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) replaced Incapacity Benefit and Income Support paid on the grounds of incapacity for new claims from 27^th October 2008. The introduction of ESA for new claimants in October 2008 was accompanied by a new assessment, the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The WCA is based on advice delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) medical services contractor, ATOS Healthcare. This publication and subsequent updates reports on latest available data on ESA claims which are assessed by the WCA.

ESA claimants' longer term entitlement to claim the benefit is dependent on the outcome of the WCA. The possible outcomes of the WCA are that claimants can be assessed as: a) suitable for the ESA Support Group, b) suitable for the ESA Work Related Activity Group or c) fit for work and therefore not entitled to continue claiming, although there is a right of appeal.

The key points from this release are:

• For all new ESA Claims from 27 October 2008 to 30 November 2010, the result of the initial WCA is as follows:
  • Support Group - 7%
  • Work Related Activity Group - 17%
  • Fit for Work - 39%
  • Claim closed before assessment complete - 36%
  • Assessment still in progress - 1%

ESA-WCA including WCA by Health Condition and Function, July 2011

• ESA: Work Capability Assessment Statistical Release July 2011 
• ESA: Work Capability Assessment Statistical Release July 2011 - Tables  

To access previous publications in full click here

Coverage: Great Britain; headline figures to country / region

Next release date: October 2011 (provisional)