Eligibility for ESA
An individual can put in a claim for ESA if they satisfy all of these conditions: * They live inThe scale of the allowance
No money is paid for the first week. After that, the basic allowance is paid to the claimant until their Work Capability Assessment (WCA) at - in theory - week 13, after which a successful claimant might receive an enhanced level of payment (depending on the level of disability and whether they enter the work-related activity group or the support group after their assessment).Types of ESA
ESA can be either contributory or income-related.Contributory and Income-Related ESA
If claimants have paid enoughWork-Related Activity Group and Support Group
After the Work Capability Assessment, claimants are split into two groups: the Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG) and the Support Group. In February 2017, 66% of claimants were in the Support Group, 17% were in the WRAG, 13% were in the assessment phase and the phase for 3% of claimants were unknown. The WRAG is for claimants who are currently unfit for work but expected to find work in the future. Claimants in the WRAG are required to participate in work-related activity or else they will be sanctioned; where their benefit payments are temporarily stopped. People who are claiming contribution-based ESA and placed in the WRAG are only allowed to claim for one year. WRAG claimants must attend a work-focused interview with a personal advisor, where they discuss how the claimant could find suitable work, and take part in activities to improve their chances of finding work. Some types of activity claimants may participate in include: * Numeracy or literacy courses * Learning how to write or improve their CV * Learning how to manage their disability more effectively. The support group is for claimants who are not considered fit for work and are unlikely to become fit for work in the near-future. Claimants in this group are paid the support component and are not required to participate in any work-related activity.The claim process
Someone wanting to claim ESA will need a medical certificate, i.e. a sick-note, signed by their GP to say that they are not fully fit for work. The new claimant must then contact the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), usually by phone, who will log their claim and usually post them a questionnaire called an ESA50, where the claimant explains how their disability affects them. In rare circumstances, a full assessment is not required, such as when a doctor has officially certified the claimant as being likely to die within six months. The completed form must then be sent in the envelope provided to the Health Assessment Advisory Service - the trading name of the assessment provider,Assessing capability for work
The assessment is often described as consisting of two separate assessments. In practice, if they have a face-to-face assessment, an individual claimant will experience only one assessment on the day (the decision-making is done afterwards). The two stages are: * The "limited capability for work" assessment, which determines whether the claimant is entitled to ESA at all. * The "limited capability for work-related activity" assessment, which tells the DWP whether somebody who has passed the first stage of the test is able to take part in "work-related activity". It also influences the rate of ESA paid to the claimant. A DWP official makes the final decision on entitlement, based on all the available evidence.Limited capability for work
At their WCA, an ESA claimant must be found to have limited capability for work in order to qualify at all. The testing process gauges the claimant's ability to perform up to 17 activities; these activities are set out on the ESA claim form. For each activity, a claimant can score 15, 9, 6 or 0 points: the more severe their disability, the more points they will score. Points are scored by having physical impairments, mental ones or a mixture of the two (if they are likely to significantly affect the claimant's ability to work). In order to be entitled to ESA, a person will need to score at least 15 points in total. Other factors, such as some aspects of pregnancy, are also considered by the assessor, who will be a nurse, doctor, occupational therapist or physiotherapist; these factors do not operate on a points system but might nevertheless qualify the claimant for ESA.Limited capability for work-related activity
This is about whether a successful claimant of ESA is capable of taking part in interviews and pre-employment training, or whether their ability to do so is limited to a significant degree. As far as the way the WCA actually operates is concerned, this is about whether the claimant has one or more severe disabilities, affecting the 17 areas which the ESA descriptors focus on. If a person is found to have a severe disability, they will be placed in the Support Group.Development of ESA
ESA superseded three older benefits: Incapacity Benefit; Income Support paid because of an illness or disability; and Severe Disablement Allowance.Early Developments: 1998-2007
A Green Paper published in 1998 proposed partially means-testing Incapacity Benefit and making deductions from the benefit payments for people receiving an occupational pension. In February 2005, the Welfare SecretaryESA introduced
In October 2008, ESA and its eligibility test, the Work Capability Assessment, were introduced for new claims. The Welfare Secretary wrote that these and other planned changes would ensure that "only those who are genuinely incapable of work" would get full ESA - other sickness benefit recipients would have to comply with plans drawn up with the DWP's private partners to get them back to work. TheCoalition 2010–2015
In early 2011, the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme got underway using a more stringent version of the WCA and the caseload's falling trend resumed - until the middle of 2013, when the caseload began to grow again after fresh guidance had to be issued on how to judge fitness for work. By 2015, in the absence of the huge fall in recipients prophesied by the architects of ESA, and in spite of the broadly downward natural long-term trend, the total caseload was little different from when ESA was introduced. Maximus took over the contract - worth £170million a year to the US firm - from Atos in March 2015.2016-Present
In 2016, Stephen Crabb, who was the secretary of state for the DWP, declared that there would be no new welfare policies, other than those set out in the Conservative Party manifesto of 2015, in that parliamentary term. In October 2016,Underpayments
Roughly 70,000 claimants were paid between £5,000 and £20,000 too little from 2011 to 2016 because the DWP miscalculated their entitlement when they were moved from incapacity benefit on to employment and support allowance. A Public Accounts Committee report accused the DWP of haste over the transfer while failing to take legal advice or make basic checks. Evidence that people were underpaid was disregarded and warnings from its own policy advisors that it should delay and sort out the issues before proceeding were ignored. The report said the DWP's lack of urgency - it took six years to start to deal with the error - showed "a culture of indifference" to people being paid too little. Meg Hillier said the affair demonstrated "weakness at the highest levels" of the DWP. "Thousands of people have not received money essential for living costs because of government's blinkered and wholly inept handling of ESA" she said.Criticism
ESA has been criticised for numerous reasons, including claims that the WCA was poorly designed, that WCA and the criteria used to determine fitness for work did not offer a realistic perspective on a claimant's ability to work, that eligibility did not consider a claimant's personal circumstances when deciding if a claimant is fit for work, the number of decisions that were being overturned on appeal, that assessors were pressured to find claimants fit for work when they did not feel they were, that ESA is being used to conceal unemployment levels, that some people were too sick or disabled to work but could not claim because they had not paid enough National Insurance contributions but their household income was too high, the decision to limit contribution-based ESA claimants who were placed in the WRAG to claiming for one year, that ESA failed to make predicted savings, the cost of outsourcing the contract for conducting the WCA, the cuts made to the amount people on ESA received, difficulties with appealing a decision on eligibility, that claimants were not incentivised to work, that claimants struggled with the application process, the use of sanctions for people in the WRAG who may be too unwell to participate in their work-related activities, that the government had unrealistic expectations for disabled people to find work, that some claimants did not receive enough money to cover their living costs, and that ESA WCAs and claims ending were associated with claimant deaths. A United Nations report has been written, which is highly critical of Employment Support Allowance.See also
* Work Capability Assessment * Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment *References
{{UK benefits Social security in the United Kingdom Disability in the United Kingdom Welfare in the United Kingdom