Recommendation 28

In 2025, the Department found, from a review of 200 cases, that some 40% of support funded by the scheme should have been provided by the employer, the employee or the NHS, and that employers had failed to make reasonable adjustments in 18% of cases reviewed.52 The Department told us that it was concerned that employers were not fulfilling their legal responsibilities and were expecting the Department to provide adjustments that would be reasonable for employers to pick up. It said that it had examples of big employers who had put in applications to Access to Work for an ergonomic chair, which was something it would expect an employer to provide. The Department also told us that it was seeing inappropriate applications for job aides whose role was not to help level the playing field for customers with disabilities as the scheme intended but more to do tasks that an employer would normally take on an additional employee to do – it described this as misusing the scheme.53