Recommendation 11

The Department has started to process applications from claimants living in specific postcodes in London and Birmingham through the health transformation. The Department acknowledged that the two health transformation areas alone will not provide it with a representative sample of claimants and that it will need a wider range of claimants to give assurance that the proposed changes to the service are working as expected. It told us that it planned to try the new service in a range of different areas and to make sure that it took into account a “wide range of customer types from across the country” as part of its evaluation of the new service.18 It intends to increase the number of claimants involved in its testing to up to 20% of new claims nationally to provide it with sufficient volumes to provide it with the assurance it needs.19