5
Set out how to involve claimants and raise national awareness of disability benefits system changes.
Recommendation
We are concerned that the Department has not done enough to communicate and engage with the public and claimants about what they can expect from the revised service. The Department is more likely to achieve its ambition to improve the service if it works with disabled people and their representative bodies to identify the best ways of delivering functional health assessments. The Department has engaged with national and local stakeholder groups and has held 18 stakeholder workshops with over 72 different organisations. The Department asserts that it has used customers’ feedback to help it design parts of the service, for example the wording on the screen and how claimants navigate through the process. Some charities and stakeholder groups welcome the Department’s proposed changes, specifically, its decision to trial having more specialist assessors for specific health conditions. However, the Department has not promoted the Programme widely to the public. Given the scale of the project and the number of clients that it will impact, the Department agrees that it should consider a national campaign to improve claimant awareness of the changes it is proposing to adopt. However, the Department does not currently intend to consider this until it reaches the stage of at scaling up the programme, which will not happen for a couple of years. Recommendation 4: The Department should set out as part of its Treasury Minute response how it will: • fully involve claimants in the design and implementation of the changes it plans to the disability benefits system; and • raise awareness nationally of the changes it is making to the health and disability benefits system and what this will look like in practice for claimants.
Government Response
A response document is linked to this report, dated 8 March 2024. Response attribution to this recommendation has not been verified. Read the response document.
Source
Committee
Public Accounts Committee
Report
Third Report - Revising health assessments for disability benefits
29 Nov 2023
HC 79
Addressee Bodies
HM Treasury
Timeline
Recommendation age
2.8 yrs
Report published
29 Nov 2023