Briefing Document: What we know regarding Access to Work Reforms and Their Impact on Disabled Employment in the Cultural Sector
Executive Summary: Investing in Disabled People for Economic Growth
The government has articulated an aim to increase employment for disabled people. However, planned changes to Access to Work (AtW) outlined in their Green Paper, "Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working" will not achieve this goal. Instead, these proposals risk undoing progress made by successful employment models for disabled people and could block many disabled individuals from working altogether. Alarmingly, substantial cuts to AtW support are already being implemented before the consultation on the Green Paper has finished, indicating "cuts by stealth" despite the proposed long-term changes being consultative. We have already published an open letter that has been signed by over 3000 cultural leaders, including the leadership of The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and The Royal Shakespeare Company. This document provides an overview of the current support available, how the Green Paper proposals will alter it, the anticipated negative impacts, and essential solutions to truly achieve the government's mission, with a specific focus on the arts & culture sector.
Key Headlines
1. When “Access to Work” works well, it is world-leading.
Access to Work is a crucial programme that provides essential financial support for the assistance disabled people need to secure or maintain employment, for example, British Sign Language Interpreters. When functioning effectively, AtW has been highly successful in enabling disabled individuals to return to work, reduce reliance on benefits, sustain careers, and stimulate local economies around them. Though we have seen significant delays and inefficiencies in the system in recent years, it is the envy of the world, and a key reason why the UK has a world-leading disability arts sector.
2. The Green Paper's approach is incompatible with the cultural sector.
The government's Green Paper suggests that the costs of supporting disabled people are excessive. This perspective fundamentally misunderstands the issue, failing to acknowledge the significant economic boost generated by supporting disabled people to maintain careers and lead arts & culture. The Green Paper proposes a move away from individualised support towards generalised programmes, coaching, and digital tools. These proposed measures are critically flawed because even in industry-leading accessible workplaces it is still necessary to have individualised support. The green paper also does not model any solution for self-employed people, and we know that at least 49% of the cultural sector are self-employed.
3. Changes will drive disabled people out of work and our national arts & culture.
These proposed changes, coupled with current reductions in support, will have widespread negative consequences:
Employment Barriers: They will likely prevent many disabled people from starting work.
Job Retention Challenges: It will become impossible for numerous disabled people to sustain long-term jobs.
Financial Waste: There is a significant risk of wasting public money without achieving any boost in employment.
Destruction of Programmes: Decades of successful disabled-focused employment programmes across the country are at risk of being wiped out.
Sectoral Harm: Industries heavily reliant on freelance workers, such as the creative industries, will be particularly damaged.
Wider Economic Decline: The broader UK economy will suffer as successful disabled-led projects and companies collapse or reduce their operations nationwide.
Detailed Briefing
What is Access to Work?
Access to Work is a strategic programme run by The Department for Work and Pensions. It directly supports disabled individuals to get into or remain in work, through the subsidy of access measures, for example, BSL interpreters. It has been a visionary programme since it was introduced in 1994, and has been a key part in ensuring that it is not more expensive to employ disabled people.
It is an incredibly important part of the cultural sector, where a number of disabled leaders have Access to Work agreements which enable them to do their jobs. These people include Jo Verrent (Director of Unlimited), Jenny Sealey (Artistic Director of Graeae), Jamie Hale (Director of CRIPtic Arts) and Jess Thom (Co-artistic Director of TourettesHero).
Grants are awarded on an individual basis, and support measures like BSL interpreters, support workers, travel support and accessible equipment required for people to do their job. The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on an employer to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees. Access to Work funding cannot be used to support these adjustments. One of the metrics used to decide whether an adjustment is “reasonable” is the cost to the business, this means that expensive measures such as BSL interpreters are often considered unreasonable and workers are required to work in situations which compromise their ability to communicate. This is where Access to Work makes a transformational impact.
The culture sector has spent decades improving employment and leadership rates of disabled people - and needs more support to overcome its specific challenge, not less. Access to Work has been foundational in ensuring this progress can happen.
The latest estimates in 22/23 show that 16.1 million people in the UK had a disability in the 2022/23 financial year. This represents 24% of the total population.
This is roughly replicated in the workforce as 23% of working age adults are disabled.
Only 14.7% of the creative industries workforce are disabled.
In organisations funded by ACE, this falls to about 9% of the NPO workforce.
Less than 2% of NPO investment by value is given to disabled-led organisations.
In recent years we have begun to see inefficiencies and delays emerge in the Access to Work system. Recently the Decode data report has shown that the wait time for PAYE workers to be referred to a case manager is 35 weeks, and a staggering 55 weeks for self-employed workers. The average wait time to receive a decision after being assigned a case manager is 26 weeks. This means that organisations are becoming increasingly reluctant to employ disabled people, because there is an up to 9 month delay from starting a job to finding out if access measures can be provided.
Some organisations that employ disabled people are operating reserves in order to manage delays to reimbursements. For example, touretteshero operates a reserve of £18,250 in order to mitigate the risk of payment delays, we believe there is a significant amount of capital that can be released from cultural balance sheets with a more efficient system.
These inefficiencies demonstrate a clear case for reform and improvement of the system, however proposals for change are a cost-cutting exercise, and will not deal with the core problem.
What are the proposals in the green paper?
The Green Paper makes a number of proposals across various different disability-related programmes, and not all of these changes are within the scope of consultation.Some changes such as the 4 point change to PIP are to be voted on before any consultation has taken place. We believe that policy changes to Access to Work will go through full consultation, though we will understand this more clearly when the draft benefits reform bill is published mid-June.
Conflating all of these programmes has made it more difficult to have a targeted and rational conversation about the proposed changes. For example, PIP and Access to Work are often conflated but PIP is not a work-related benefit, whereas Access to Work is related to work.
While all of these changes will have a detrimental impact on the cultural sector and disabled people, we know that proposed changes to Access to Work will have a significant impact on disabled workers, artists and leaders and that is what we are focusing on.
It is somewhat unspecific what exactly is being proposed in the green paper, but the big theme is a reduction in individualised support. Instead of investing in what individual disabled people need to work, it proposes:
generalised support programmes for workplaces.
coaching
digital tools
There is important work to be done on making workplaces accessible, but the idea of a fully-accessible workplace is not a practical reality. We might only remove the need for BSL interpreters if everyone becomes fluent in BSL. We might have some influence over our own workplace and practice, but we cannot change that of partners and collaborators, and they have no legal relationship to a disabled individual.
Touretteshero is often considered an industry-leading example of accessible practice, and has hugely sophisticated access mechanisms built into the company - but it is still necessary to provide individualised support. Similarly, Graeae has built and recently extended one of the country’s leading buildings for accessible artistic practice and individualised support is still needed.
The suggestion that support becomes less individualised is dangerous, and risks creating a hierarchy of disability. Those people who can have workplaces become accessible to them might remain in work, but people with higher, more complex, or less common support needs will find themselves unable to properly get the support they need.
It is important at this stage that we respond to the green paper consultation. Though we are unsure how effective this will be in changing policy, we know that it will not be possible to influence policy makers at a later stage if we have not had a good turnout to consultation. You can find more information and support in responding on our hub here.
What is happening outside of the proposals in the green paper
At the same time as the proposals in the green paper, we are seeing widespread reports of reductions or non-renewals of support through Access to Work.
Recently in the cultural sector we have seen Jess Thom announce she is no longer able to do her job as co-artistic director of Touretteshero due to a 61% cut in her Access to Work support. Her disability has not changed. Her job has not changed. But the support Access to Work believes she needs has apparently changed, with no clear explanation.
There has been no clear communication about these changes, and no clarity on what process or procedures have been changed. Disability Arts Online are trying to put together a picture here.
This has the potential to become catastrophic for the cultural sector, where a significant number of disabled leaders need Access to Work support to do their jobs, and the absence of proper process means it is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to challenge these decisions.
This is not demonstrative of a government that claims to be the party of work, this suggests a government that is unable to appropriately modernise and adapt the necessary mechanisms required to get Britain working again.
Our immediate suggestions
Disabled people are keen to collaborate with the government in its objective to boost employment and living standards for disabled individuals. By drawing on disabled expertise, we can guide the government towards economic growth that benefits all people in the UK, not solely non-disabled individuals.
To achieve this, we advocate that the government should:
Immediate Pause: Immediately halt any current policy changes related to support for disabled people until more effective plans can be developed.
Expert Consultation: Establish a panel of experts from across the disabled community to support and oversee the reform of this crucial support.
Disabled Leadership: Ensure disabled leadership in this reform by appointing a disabled Member of Parliament to oversee the process.
Protect Individualised Support: Invest in disabled talent by safeguarding the core principle of individualised support within Access to Work. Funds must be wisely used to provide the precise support a person needs to work, rather than being wasted on generic "solutions".
Streamline Access to Work: Reform Access to Work processes to make applications easier, faster, and more efficient, thereby improving the ability of disabled people to participate in the workforce.
Support Freelance Workers: Ensure AtW is flexible and appropriate for the needs of disabled people in freelance careers.
Embed Disabled Leadership: Guarantee that Access to Work is disabled-led moving forward, and that all staff fully understand diverse disabled experiences.
Career-Long Support: Protect support for disabled people throughout their entire careers, not just at the initial stages.
As this work progresses we will be trying to co-ordinate the development of more robust policy suggestion.