Incapacity Benefit Customers To Be Reassessed

Over the past twelve months over 20,000 Incapacity Benefit customers have begun a journey to gauge their capability for work.

It is planned that a total of 76,000 Incapacity Benefit customers will have their entitlement to the benefit reassessed by March 2014.

Announcing the figures, Social Development Minister, Nelson McCausland, said he was encouraged to see that the reassessment of Incapacity Benefit customers was making a real difference to the lives of people who would otherwise have been left trapped in the benefits system.

Minister McCausland said: "The reassessment of Incapacity Benefit customers is vitally important. It ensures that we do not allow people to languish on a life of benefits, with no opportunity or support to move back into employment.

"It's well recognised that having a job is both good for the individual and for the community, the old Incapacity Benefit regime however, ensured that this was not an option for people; it consigned many of those who received it to a life of economic inactivity and focussed on how their illness limited their ability to work.

"This reassessment process however, is focussing on what people can do, and giving them the support they need to take the necessary steps, for the first time in a long time, towards getting back to work."

Those people who have been found to have some capability of work – those who are placed in the Work Related Activity Group - will now receive Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and be given tailored support to prepare them for work and to address any barriers to employment they may have.

Those people who have been found capable of work have been offered support to ensure they can understand the options available to them, such as a ‘better-off calculation’ carried out by the Social Security Agency.

Those who have been found not capable of work have been awarded the highest rate of Employment and Support Allowance and are not expected to undertake any work-related activity.

(CD/GK)