Press release: Grant to support disabled people in the workplace rises by over a third

Hundreds of disabled employees are to benefit from a £15,000 rise in Access to Work grants to assist them at work, following new measures introduced in Parliament today (20 March 2018).

From April 2018, people will be able to claim up to £57,200 annually to help pay for additional support that they may need in the workplace – approximately £15,000 more than the current cap of £42,100.

Access to Work provides financial support to ensure someone’s disability or health condition doesn’t hold them back at work, and can cover workplace adaptations, assistive technology, transport and interpreters.

Increasing the amount people can receive annually will ensure that more disabled people, particularly from the deaf community, are able to benefit from the grant and achieve their career aspirations.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Esther McVey, said:

We believe that disabled people should have every opportunity to thrive in the workplace, and the tailored support of Access to Work caters to every individual’s unique needs.

By extending this grant we’re ensuring that many more disabled people can reach their career potential, which is a key part of our commitment to getting one million more disabled people in work by 2027.

The UK Council on Deafness said:

We are pleased to see that the Department for Work and Pensions has decided to significantly raise the Access to Work cap.

This will help deaf people whose first language is British Sign Language (BSL) to access the communication support so vital to enabling them to thrive and succeed in the workplace.

Access to Work is part of a range of support available to ensure that disabled people can enter, and thrive in, the workplace. This includes supported work experience placements, the government’s Disability Confident scheme and personalised support package. These are all part of the government’s ambitious plan to see a million more disabled people in work by 2027.

More information

Read more about Access to Work

The new cap will take effect from 1 April 2018.

As we continually seek to improve Access to Work, we will introduce the following measures:

  • discretion in exceptional cases of multiple disability, to consider award limits averaged over a longer period – for example, where a customer’s ongoing need for a support worker may be below the cap but when coupled with a periodic need for say a wheelchair, would exceed the cap in that year
  • introduction of managed personal budgets to enable greater choice and control for customers in the way grants are spent
  • taking applications 12 weeks ahead of a job start date rather than the current 6 weeks to allow more time for support to be agreed and put in place
  • continuing to invest in our digital improvements such as developing the facility to submit invoices online
  • allowing more flexibility in how people can use Access to Work to support short periods of work experience where there is a likelihood of a paid job in the near future

Contact Press Office

Press Office

Caxton House

Tothill Street
London
SW1H 9NA

Follow DWP on:



Dundee Decides – results event invitation #DundeeDecides #WestEndDecides

Come along to the event below to hear the results of  ‘Dundee Decides’ – Community infrastructure developments for the West End and across the other seven Dundee council ward areas.

Be part of the launch of the new Local Community Plans.   The plans are based on the findings from the Engage Dundee consultation.

Free entry – register through the Eventbrite link here or call 435855.




UK energy

This unseasonal cold weather has placed more strains on the UK electricity supply. Yesterday we were importing substantial volumes from France and the Netherlands, needing coal to generate 18.7% of our demand, and finding it difficult to get enough from renewables. Gas fired stations still provided the single biggest volumes at 37.3% of the total.

The EU is quite dependent on Russian gas. Fortunately the UK is not so dependent. 43% of our gas comes from our own fields, and it should be possible to increase that volume with the right policies. The largest source of UK  imported gas is Norway, with significant quantities also coming in by tanker from places outside the EU like Qatar. It is the imported gas from the continent that does contain some Russian gas, where the continental system needs decent volumes of Russian gas to keep the whole system with sufficient pressure and volume to meet demand.

The threats to energy security that we sometimes hear in world arguments reinforces the  case for the UK to look to greater energy independence. It will also help our large  balance of payments deficit if we seek to supply more of our own gas and electricity. The UK has increasingly linked itself into the EU system of energy markets. In doing so the UK has reduced its margins of capacity, cutting the amount of reserve electricity capacity it has, and removing an important part of its gas storage system. This has increased our import dependence and cut the resilience of our system

Closure of the remaining coal stations would seem unwise before we have put in place more reserve capacity that can function on cold days when there is little wind and sun to power the main renewables. Putting in place more gas storage would  be wise, as would developing more local supplies. Relying on EU imports when they in turn rely more heavily on Russian gas does not look like a great policy.



Fourteen States firm up Action plans for IEC in SBM-G

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation today held a National Consultation on Information, Education and Communication (IEC) in the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) {SBM-G} in Delhi. This was the second such consultation under the Ministry’s plan to finalise IEC plans of all the States.

Go to Source
Author:



11th Science Communicators’ Meet inaugurated

Urging scientists to open Science centres in villages, the Deputy Chief Ministerof Manipur, Shri Y. Joykumar Singh has said that scientists should make an endeavor to explain basic issues to the common people.

Go to Source
Author: