Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment group of experts — a professor of psychiatry, a consultant psychiatrist in learning disability, a professor of rheumatology, and an expert in human resources — reviewed the WCA in 2013 and concluded that "the WCA produced consistent results on the whole, and is an accurate indicator of work capability compared with expert opinion". But in the year that the study was published, the firms running back-to-work training for people on ESA said they had "ongoing concerns about the accuracy of the WCA". And in 2014, Atos announced that it had come to the conclusion that "the WCA is not working
Incapacity Benefit declared 'fit for work' formally appealed against the decision, at which stage 40% of decisions challenged were overturned and the claimant moved onto ESA, not JSA. By May 2017, fewer than 3000 people were still receiving the old payment. The number of claimants of sickness benefits increased rapidly from the mid-1980s. The trend was investigated in a series of studies commissioned by the government in 1991 and published in 1993. Several possible causes were identified: The House of Commons research paper that summarised the studies' findings in the 1990s concluded that the number of new claims and their general pattern