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Employment and support allowance: early implementation experiences of customers and staff

DWP research report 631

This small scale study covers the early stage of implementation (May-July 2009) of employment and support allowance (ESA). It is intended to provide formative policy evaluation and guide later stages of the evaluation but the findings are not intended to be regarded as definitive outcomes.

Key findings are:

Staff experiences

• Many staff, at all stages of the claim process, and both within and outside JCP, were very positive about the policy intention of ESA, but actual implementation experiences had not always lived up to their expectations and hopes for the new benefit, including the allocation of customers to particular claim outcome groups.
• Staff had varied experiences of training for ESA.

Help for those in the work related activity group

• Staff and provider advisers expressed concerns at the perceived stringency of the work capability assessment (WCA)
• Staff and provider advisers were also concerned that the unexpectedly severe health problems of many customers in the work related activity group (WRAG) meant that the scope for helping some of these customers back to work was felt to be limited. Advisers felt hindered by their lack of discretion.
• Providers were in some cases targeting adviser resources explicitly on those closer to the labour market.

Sanctions

• There were mixed views on sanctions; while some JCP staff interviewed felt that these were more streamlined in ESA than they were for IB, others argued that they exerted less influence over customers.
• Providers reported avoiding the use of sanctions wherever possible, because of the negative impact on their working relationship with customers.

Customer experiences

• The customers interviewed for this study had generally not heard of ESA and knew nothing about the benefit prior to making their claim.
• Some customers experienced delays in payments and found that documents had not been received by the benefits delivery centre (BDC).
• Many customers reported that they had struggled with the ESA50 form, mainly because of its length, its repetitive nature and its perceived complexity.
• WRAG customers interviewed for this study often did not understand the ESA groupings and were often unaware that they had been grouped, and/or unaware of what difference this made.
• The customers interviewed for this study universally reported having received no information prior to the first work focused interview (WFI) other than the date and time of the appointment, and so arrived with no real idea of what to expect. This initial letter has subsequently been amended.

A theme running through all the stages of the customer journey at the time this research was conducted was that of an information deficit, with customers being somewhat unclear about how each stage worked.

You can view and download the full report from the DWP website.

More information

• dwp website

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