Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment thereby saving £7billion a year. A reassessment of long-term recipients was expected to start in 2009 but the start was delayed until 2011 while the test's criteria were reviewed. In 2012, the DWP's handling of its contract with Atos was the subject of a critical report by the National Audit Office (NAO). The Public Accounts Committee heard that in that year the DWP had paid Atos £112m to carry out WCAs. The chair of the committee told the BBC that the DWP got "far too many decisions wrong on claimants’ ability to work" and that this came at a "considerable
Work Capability Assessment you can't do"; to take into account new disability legislation, changes in the workplace and developments in occupational health; to make the test more stringent; to assess most new claims in person rather than on paper; and, once the new test had bedded in, to use it to re-evaluate virtually every established sickness benefit recipient. To facilitate these last two objectives testing capacity was increased fivefold by employing nurses and physiotherapists to work alongside doctors, and a semi-structured interview technique based on a computer-generated template was used for the first time. Initially, only fresh claims for ESA were assessed, but