Contractors likely to be bidding for new five-year contracts to test eligibility for disability benefits are still producing a “shockingly high” number of sub-standard assessment reports, nine years after they first won contracts to carry them out, Disability News Service has highlighted.
An audit of assessment reports written by outsourcing giants Atos and Capita shows that more than one in five (22%) had to be amended because of significant flaws.
Another 2.4% were found by the August 2022 audit to be so flawed that they were considered “unacceptable”.
The two companies need to ensure that fewer than 3% of assessments are found unacceptable to meet the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) contractual requirement.
In all, only 66% of assessment reports reached the highest A grade, with another 9% classed as acceptable but requiring “learning” from the assessor, and 22% seen as acceptable but still needing amendment.
The audits were carried out by DWP, even though the audit process is described by the department as “independent”, with the figures obtained through a freedom of information request.
Further figures obtained through a parliamentary question by Labour’s Kate Osamor found that – through 2021-22 as a whole – both Atos and Capita failed to meet the lower than 3% target, with the DWP audit finding 3.1%of the assessments carried out by each were of an “unacceptable” standard.
Atos and Capita are both likely to be among companies bidding for a share of £2.8 billion to carry out health and disability benefit assessments across five areas of the UK over five years from April 2024,
When they are awarded, the contracts will see a single supplier providing both WCAs and PIP assessments in each of the five areas.
This could mean Atos once again carrying out WCAs, eight years after it withdrew from the contract following years of negative publicity and links between its actions and the deaths of disabled benefit claimants.
The audit results also show that just 80% of assessments carried out by DWP’s third provider – Maximus – were considered to have “fully conformed” to the company’s professional standards.
Maximus carries out work capability assessments, testing eligibility for employment and support allowance (ESA) and the equivalent element of universal credit.
Another 4.8% of Maximus assessments – just inside the contractual requirement of 5% – were found to have failed to meet “key requirements”.
Atos, Capita and Maximus have all been closely linked to the deaths of claimants over the last decade.
Their wider failings have been exposed through research and direct action by grassroots groups of disabled people, inquiries by parliamentary committees, concerns raised by individual MPs, the release of government statistics, television documentaries, and a lengthy investigation into the PIP assessment practices of Atos and Capita by Disability News Service.
Ken Butler DR UK’s Welfare Rights and Policy Adviser said:
The level of sub-reports produced by the three DWP medical assessors are disgraceful. Worse, the level of reports passed as “acceptable” still result in around 70% of disabled claimants successfully appealing PIP decisions.
Not only should audits of medical reports be truly independent. The assessment of PIP and ESA claims should be taken in-house by the DWP rather than out-sourced to commercial contractors.”
Source and for further information see DWP assessment firms still producing shocking levels of sub-standard reports available from disabilitynewsservice.com.