ESA Claimants who are not required to undergo repeat assessments

The request was partially successful.

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

In October 2016, then DWP Minister Damian Green announced that people with lifelong health conditions would not be subject to repeat ESA Assessments, saying

"Employment support allowance will now continue automatically for those who have lifelong, severe health conditions with no prospect of improvement, Damian Green said"
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016...

Please answer as many questions as possible starting from 1 onwards within time and money constraints.

1) Could you give the criteria / guidelines in use to determine which claimants are covered by this exemption

2) Could you please state how many ESA Claimants are now exempt from repeat assessments ( to the last available set of figures)

3) Could you please provide a break down by primary health condition of those claimants

Yours faithfully,

Robert Ellard

DWP freedom-of-information-requests, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear DWP freedom-of-information-requests,

This request is long overdue, by law I should have received a response by 23rd of July. Please will you expedite this response as soon as possible

Yours sincerely,

Robert Ellard

Operations FOI Requests, Department for Work and Pensions

2 Attachments

 
Dear Robert
 
 
Please find attached our response to your recent Freedom of Information
request.
 
 
 
 
Yours sincerely
 
DWP Central Freedom of Information Team
 
 
 
 
 
 

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N. Lane left an annotation ()

DWP does not currently hold the information you have requested. DWP does
not have a specific identifier for those placed in the Severe Condition criteria.

This seems a little odd - they are currently marking these people with a recall date in 2030 - so surely a quick search for people with a recall date of 2030 or even a recall date of longer than thier standard 2yrs etc could find this.

Do they honestly not know how to use thier own systems?

Robert Ellard left an annotation ()

Yeah there is something not quite right about this response