Independent report

Work Capability Assessment independent review – year 4

The fourth independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (Dr Paul Litchfield).

• From: Department for Work and Pensions
• Published: 12 December 2013

Documents

Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 4

Ref: ISBN 9780108560125

PDF, 426 KB, 102 pages

RTF version – Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 4

MS Word Document, 1.21 MB

Welsh: Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment – year 4

PDF, 52.4 KB, 9 pages

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Terms of Reference: fourth independent review of the Work Capability Assessment

PDF, 20.8 KB, 1 page

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Details

Dr Paul Litchfield was appointed to lead the fourth independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) in 2013. This review sets out a series of recommendations to the government based on the evidence he collected as part of the review and which complement the recommendations from the first 3 annual reviews carried out by Professor Malcolm Harrington.

The key findings and recommendations from this review are:

• DWP should review the WCA and its use of scores, place less emphasis on the number attained, and use the calculation to determine whether the threshold for benefit has been reached
• WCA needs to be fair and widely perceived as such (the review highlights areas for improvement)
• decision making must be improved
• the process takes too long and needs to be simplified
• the limited capability for work questionnaire (ESA50) should be redesigned, and training improved, to help decision makers when assessing people with mental health problems

We published the terms of reference for the fourth independent review on 1 July 2013.

Dr Litchfield issued a call for evidence to inform the fourth independent review (1 July 2013 to 27 August 2013).

Previous reviews

Third independent review of the Work Capability Assessment

Second independent review of the Work Capability Assessment

First independent review of the Work Capability Assessment

Published 12 December 2013