Policy paper

Government response to the Work Capability Assessment independent review year 5

Government response to Dr Paul Litchfield's independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

• From: Department for Work and Pensions
• Published: 27 February 2015

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Documents

Government’s response to the independent review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 5

Ref: ISBN 9781474115568, Cm. 9014

PDF, 465 KB, 41 pages

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Print version: Government’s response to the independent review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 5

Ref: ISBN 9781474115551, Cm. 9014

PDF, 759 KB, 44 pages

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Text version (RTF): Government’s response to the independent review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 5

RTF, 704 KB

Welsh: Ymateb y Llywodraeth i’r Adolygiad Annibynnol o’r Asesiad Gallu i Weithio – blwyddyn pump

Ref: ISBN 978-1-78425-480-3, Cm. 9014

PDF, 130 KB, 7 pages

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Details

The government welcomes the fifth, and final, independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) published on 27 November 2014, the second to be conducted by Dr Paul Litchfield. Dr Litchfield is Chief Medical Officer and Director of Health, Safety and Wellbeing for BT Group, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Faculty of Occupational Medicine.

Dr Litchfield made 28 recommendations for DWP to improve the WCA. These relate to a range of issues and include:

• increasing in the number of people placed in the Employment and Support Allowance support group, especially younger people
• ensuring that communications are as good as they can be, especially for more vulnerable claimants
• providing better support for claimants with learning disabilities

In this response we describe how we will work towards achieving Dr Litchfield’s recommendations to help further improve the WCA.

Published 27 February 2015