Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) is a United Kingdom welfare payment for adults younger than the State Pension age who are having difficulty finding work because of their long-term medical condition or a disability.
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).
An enhanced disability premium of £16.80 a week may be paid to single people receiving the support component of income-related ESA; for a couple, the rate is £24.10 where one or both partners qualify.
Claimants in the WRAG are required to participate in work-related activity or else they well be sanctioned; where their benefit payments are temporarily stopped.
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.
[11] The ESA50 form, together with any other information sent with it by the claimant, will be read by a qualified healthcare professional, who will then decide on whether a face-to-face medical assessment is actually necessary: some people with severe disabilities can be granted ESA based solely on the documents supplied, if that is clear from the paperwork.
For this reason, Maximus encourages new claimants to send as much relevant information as possible and give a detailed description of their disability when filling in the claim form.
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).
[11] 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.
In March 2005, Atos was awarded the contract to work with the DWP to build the software programme that would be used in the assessment of claims for the allowance that would take the place of Incapacity Benefit.
[25] 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.
[29] 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.
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.
"Thousands of people have not received money essential for living costs because of government's blinkered and wholly inept handling of ESA" she said.