The replacement of an ageing system in place for 30 years is hoped to eat into a major backlog, but senior leaders retain a ‘scepticism’ about the power of AI
The Department for Work and Pensions will shortly replace a 30-year-old IT system underpinning Access to Work. While the replacement platform will “enable us to avoid the problems that we have seen in the past”, there remains a “slight scepticism” about the power of new technology to address all issues faced in delivering the benefit for disabled people.
A recent report from the National Audit Office found that the average processing time for Access to Work (ATW) claims in the 2024/25 year was 109 days. This compares with a DWP target of 25 days, and callers to the ATW helpline are currently advised they could be waiting up to 37 weeks for a decision to be made on their claim – equating to 259 days.
In a recent evidence session for a PAC inquiry into the issues with the benefit – which offers support to help people with a disability or health condition to obtain or remain in work – the DWP’s permanent secretary Peter Schofield told MPs that there are three IT systems supporting the administration of ATW.
This includes a platform that supports the front-end online application process, and another used to make and manage payments – both of which are “more modern systems”, according to the perm sec.
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“In the middle, there is this legacy platform—a case-management tool—that has not been developed in recent years at all, going back to when Access to Work started,” in 1994, Schofield said. “That does not talk effectively to the other two systems. Over the summer… we will be introducing a modern platform for that middle stage… that will come in in June this year. That will then create a platform that can connect effectively to the other two platforms. As we build the systems off the back of that, we can then introduce a modern case management system that avoids the need for re-keying, and we can build on from that much better data collection that enables us to target our work more effectively. It is a starting point; the foundations go in in June, which will enable us to avoid the problems that we have seen in the past.”
He added: “[These systems] will be integrated, so they will work effectively. DWP has many modular systems. We are basically developing modular systems that talk to each other. Each one can then be modernised without switching off the others, which enables us to do modernisation in parallel and make progress more quickly.”
Tech and targets
The long-standing departmental target is for caseworkers to process an average of 2.8 claims per day but, having lagged this benchmark for some time, the DWP will shortly undertake an assessment to determine whether this remains an appropriate and achievable baseline.
Schofield told the committee that the output of staff has been impacted as “we have seen… not only a doubling of claims, but a really dramatic change in the nature of the claims coming in and of the health conditions that we are talking about—more mental health conditions and more conditions around neurodiversity”.
“There is not a standard way of looking at what would be required in terms of reasonable adjustments,” for these conditions, he said.
More than 150,000 people submitted an application for ATW in 2024/25, while almost 60,000 received some form of financial support during the year. The most common forms of which related to the provision of special assistive equipment or a support worker.
Given the rise in the power and prevalence of artificial intelligence technology, committee chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown suggested to the perm sec that this “should produce a step change in productivity – and you should be looking at a much greater target than 2.8 cases per person per day as a result of the new technology”.
In response, Schofield said: “I am a big believer in AI. [But] there is a slight scepticism. We are talking about individual cases: people can have the same health condition, but it can play out in a completely different way in different work settings, so there are a lot of variables and data that you need to draw together to make a decision. I think AI augmentation will be able to help decision makers make their decisions, as it could help them sift through the evidence that is there, but I am not sure about the idea that you could press a button and just find everything out.”
