A73Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Timely workplace adjustments for disabled workers
Existing action A73, assessed at the same scope.
Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Disabled people in Great Britain applying to Access to Work who are in work or have a job offer, starting with those at risk of leaving work while they wait. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: Great Britain.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 16.0–22.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline: Access to Work (£320.7m on provision in 2024–25) and 480 extra case managers and caseworkers to clear the backlog by September 2027 (May 2026; restated 2 October 2026). A defined decision standard for in-work cases, tested with a comparison, is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Test a defined assessment-to-adjustment improvement for workers facing verified delays, distinguishing employer duties from public support. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Jobs & pay
- In the national plan: Related option, assessed separately
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Access to Work research identifies service experience and gaps; the effect of shortening a particular delay needs direct evaluation.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Specify the assessment-to-adjustment bottleneck for a defined worker group, distinguishing employer duties from public support.
- Test whether it works
- Time to a usable adjustment, job retention, worker experience and access against the existing pathway.
- Establish the cost
- Assessors, equipment, support, employer contributions and administration, including replacement and renewal.
- Protect against harm
- Do not substitute public support for employer obligations; protect consent, privacy and accessible appeals.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Timely workplace adjustments for disabled workers: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Residual harms (Hm)2 of 3 — Manageable harm with specified safeguards
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Distribution (Fa)3 of 3 — Benefits concentrated on disadvantaged people with assessed burdens
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 16.0–22.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 16.4–21.8 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 17.8–21.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Audit delays and current legal/service baseline; cost assessors, adjustments, employer contributions and administration. Measure retention, access and worker experience. Proposed owners: DWP, employers and support providers.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending baseline verification, incremental costing and funding; not a rollout approval”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Not fully costed in this review”.
Still to cost: Audit delays and current legal/service baseline; cost assessors, adjustments, employer contributions and administration. Measure retention, access and worker experience. Proposed owners: DWP, employers and support providers.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: DWP, employers and support providers (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Department for Work and Pensions, with employers (Equality Act 2010 s.20 duty to make reasonable adjustments) (action record)
- Scotland:
- Department for Work and Pensions, with employers (Equality Act 2010 s.20 duty to make reasonable adjustments) (action record)
- Wales:
- Department for Work and Pensions, with employers (Equality Act 2010 s.20 duty to make reasonable adjustments) (action record)
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Northern Ireland runs a separate Access to Work (NI) scheme through the Department for Communities; not assessed.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Average working days from Access to Work application to decision: latest 109 days (November 2025); baseline 28 days (2021–22) (Great Britain).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
DWP research describes Access to Work and evaluation challenges; it is not a causal estimate of this process improvement. This narrow proposal does not exhaust disability or gender equality.
Sources: gov.uk (not yet in the source register)
SWOT points it addresses
Review record
Assessment status: Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.