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,
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment reasons for overturning the DWP's decisions: In the same year, a parliamentary committee heard evidence from welfare advisors that, in nearly two out of three successful appeals to tribunals against fit-for-work decisions, appellants were seeing their points rise from "zero" in the original assessments — meaning that the original WCA had detected no relevant disabilities at all — to at least 15 points after the tribunals had independently assessed their claims. The Work Programme's training providers have complained that claimants who were "clearly unfit for any type of work-related activity" were nonetheless being put in the Work-Related Activity Group rather