Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment the "written" guidance contained in the 255-page instruction manual issued to all assessors: The foreword to the WCA Handbook states: On 22 July 2013, the DWP announced that all Atos WCA assessors would be retrained, as part of a "quality improvement plan" that followed "a DWP audit which identified an unacceptable reduction in the quality of written reports produced following assessments." In 2006, the New Labour government set out its plans for welfare reform: over the course of a decade, it expected the deployment of the WCA to shrink the number of people on out-of-work sickness benefits by one million,
Work Capability Assessment 'fit for work' by the DWP at the first stage of the decision-making process. The DWP then overturned a sizeable percentage of its own decisions at the reconsideration stage, while independent tribunals overturned still more. More recently, DWP data for the first quarter of 2016 showed that 9% of WCAs carried out at that point in time were reassessments of old Incapacity Benefit claims, while 21% were reassessments of successful ESA claims and the remaining 70% were new assessments of fresh claims. The outcomes, before any reconsiderations or appeals, were: A key recommendation from the first external review of the