There has been a major change to who carries out benefits assessments, including for personal independence payment (PIP) and the work capability assessment (WCA) for universal credit (UC)and employment and support allowance (ESA). The Health Assessment Advisory Service (HAAS) have taken over providing assessments from 7 September 2024.
The DWP say that if you have received a letter from your previous provider with an appointment date after 7 September, you should follow the instructions on your letter and attend your appointment. If you need further information, new providers' telephone lines will be up and running from1pm on Monday 9 September.
HAAS is part of the DWP. (Confusingly, HAAS was the name used solely by Maximus up until 6 September, when they carried out WCAs as CHDAUK). HAAS provides training, guidance and software for assessors. But the assessors themselves work for private sector companies. There are four companies involved in carrying out benefits assessments:
- Maximus cover Northern England and Scotland (though PIP has been replaced by ADP in Scotland and is not part of the contract)
- Capita cover the Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Serco cover South West England and South Central England
- Ingeus cover South East England, London and East Anglia
In addition, a small number of assessments are now done directly by the DWP.
You can find a full list of all the postcodes and which HAAS provider covers them on the .gov.uk website
These private sector companies carry out all benefits assessments in their geographical area, including for:
- Personal independence payment assessments
- Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) for universal credit and employment and support allowance.
- Disability living allowance (child)
- Industrial injuries disablement benefit
- Veterans UK
The assessments remain entirely separate, however, there is no joint assessment that combines both PIP and the WCA at a single meeting.
All the providers offer face-to-face, video and telephone assessments.
But Capita appears to be something of an outlier amongst the service providers.
It was the last to get its website online today, by some hours.
In addition, whilst the other three providers have published details of all their face-to-face assessment centres, Capita has not done so, at least as yet.
For video assessments, all the providers are using the DWP’s version of “Attend Anywhere” software, which is also used by the NHS for video consultations.
But while the other providers all have a simple direct link from their websites to a waiting room for claimants, Capita has no such link and requires claimants to read through long, complex instructions or watch two videos before typing in a web address to get to the waiting room.
Although all the assessment providers are covering all the benefits listed above, for the time being most assessors will only carry out either PIP assessments or WCAs, depending on which they have been employed to do up until now. Only after they have undergone training in other assessments, will they be able to carry them out.
So, from a claimants point of view, although the company making the profits may have changed, there will be virtually no difference in the experience of being assessed for PIP, ESA or UC.
However, with the DWP now having complete control over training, software and guidance it will be more straightforward for changes to be rolled-out in the future.
Possibilities include changes to the WCA as Labour push to get more disabled claimants into employment, changes to PIP activities which may be unveiled in the coming months in order to cut the benefits bill and a combined PIP and WCA assessment to cut assessment costs.
But for the moment, it’s simply business as usual.
