Budget announcements on health and disability benefit assessments

ashmere

From the rightsnet site today

Z2K: Digging into the Budget announcements on health and disability benefit assessments

New Blog from Z2K's Samuel Thomas:

The detail of the Budget announcement on health and disability benefit assessments has received surprisingly little attention.

Budget documents confirm that the government is bringing forward three measures: increasing the number of work capability reassessments, reducing the frequency of PIP reassessments, and increasing the number of face-to-face assessments. In total, these plans are expected to save the government just under £600 million by 2029/2030.

What will these measures mean for disabled people who rely on our social security system? And what do they tell us more broadly about this government’s approach to the thorny issue of health and disability benefit assessments?

More: Checks and balances? Digging into the Budget announcements on health and disability benefit assessments

https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/now/post/69150

Adrian_Scope

Thank you for sharing @ashmere.

ashmere

Z2K have said

"The government also announced plans to carry out a further 122,000 work capability reassessments by 2029/30, on top of the plans already announced in March to restart them for the small group of claimants classed as having short-term prognoses. The government has not confirmed how many total annual reassessments it now anticipates carrying out by the end of the forecast period, but it seems this is part of a gradual return towards carrying out work capability reassessments as standard."

So does this mean that the plans to scrap the work capability assessment from 2028/29 have been dropped?

Nightcity

Mcfadden recently refused to answer in an interview when asked directly.

He has recently stated "I'm not ruling anything in or anything out" again and again it seems clear they don't have a clue themselves.

122k is actually tiny considering the amount of claimants+ new ones incoming, they are still in backlogs and not clearing change of circumstances cases in a timely manner.