DWP study shows their health assessors feel ‘despised’ – and are quitting in droves

A newly-released report commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has revealed that over half of its health assessors quit the job within their first year.

The health professionals reported feeling ‘despised’ for their role, which involves evaluating people for both Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the health-related element of Universal Credit (UC).

DWP health assessors: ‘a cog in the machine’

The DWP carried out its research back in 2022, and included findings from 2021. It found that a full 40% of new recruits don’t make it through the training period of three months. By the end of a year, 52% of the health professionals quit working for the department.

Both PIP and Universal Credit disability assessments have to be conducted by a qualified health professional. However, the DWP is held in such low regard that most don’t even consider working for it until they have “no other option but to leave the NHS”. In fact, one assessor stated that:

We all got in healthcare for altruistic reasons and that maybe isn’t the case in this job… you’re a cog in the machine doing bureaucratic work.

During a work capability assessment for the health-related element of universal credit, the assessor is meant to determine an applicant’s level of capability and how that would affect their working life.

Likewise, for a PIP assessment, the health professional scores an applicant according to their level of impairment with daily tasks. This score determines the level of support the claimant receives.

‘Punitive, exhausting and inflexible’

However, the disabled people at the receiving end of these assessments have often described them as inconsistent, hostile and degrading. Financial insecurity charity Turn2us’ head of policy, Lucy Bannister, explained:

People recovering from illness or navigating the additional cost of disability should rightly expect to be treated with dignity and respect. But this report shows that’s not happening.

The staff carrying out assessments for disability benefits describe the system in the same terms as disabled people: punitive, exhausting and inflexible, focused on tick-boxing rather than care. It’s not working properly for anyone.

One DWP contract manager commented on newly recruited health professionals for the study:

The idea that they would want to be on a treadmill of collecting details but not intervening is alien to a significant proportion of the health sector.

A lot of people that apply for roles don’t understand this point. They arrive. Have rigorous training and [the] penny drops that this is what role is.

‘They suck you into it’

A former nurse, who left the DWP after two years, put it more bluntly for the Independent:

They suck you into it, because when you first go they tell you ‘give it six months, because it’s a totally new way to how you’ve been working as a nurse’. […]

Most assessors leave at around six months because they realise they’ve been had.

She also described remaining in the office from 5am to 10pm “working [herself] to death”. This was because the DWP’s backlog of cases has become completely unmanageable. And, as the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey explained, the situation has only gotten worse in 2026:

the department has diverted staff from dealing with new claims to tackle the backlog of reviews. This meant the DWP got to brag that they processed the highest number of reviews since the benefit began. 96% more reviews were carried out than in Q3 in 2024. But it was only because they had so many left over to clear.

This has, of course, meant that new claimants suffered, as clearance for new claims fell by 25%. This meant that 40,000 new claimants were left waiting. This is despite the fact that the number of new claims is down by 6% from the same period in 2024. This also means the decision time has risen, from 14 weeks in October 2024 to 16 weeks in October 2025.

Reform and rebellion

Given the massive backlog, Labour came up with the bright idea of ‘reforming’ PIP assessments back in the summer of 2025. That is to say, they attempted to rush through massive cuts that could have ruined PIP claimants’ lives.

The proposed changes would have made it far more difficult to qualify for PIP. This would have resulted in thousands of disabled people losing the support they relied on. The cuts were only narrowly averted when a group of Labour MPs rebelled against the plans.

Instead, DWP minister Stephen Timms took PIP off the table during the debate, beginning a review in its place. However, this meant MPs were able to vote through Universal Credit cuts. And, of course, the review itself is already looking like a complete farce:

Timms has spent a good chunk of the last few months umming and awwing over how he can make it look like the review is co-produced with disabled people. It took until 30 October 2025 for them to appoint disabled co-chairs.

At the same time, they quietly released the terms of reference which, while seemingly aimed at placating disabled people, confirmed that all PIP recipients will be at risk by DWP decisions.

‘Struggling to do the job’

The DWP conducted their staff-retention study back in 2022, and only chose to publish it now. However, the writing has been on the wall of a long time, as Charlton-Dailey wrote earlier this month:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the main reason the government is pushing ahead with PIP reform is that they don’t have the staff to process the claims they already have. As a recent report found, delays to PIP are endangering people’s lives. The same report revealed that the DWP planned to make the application process more online-focused and to give every claimant a case worker. But this only works if the DWP can actually find the staff.

With the DWP struggling to do the job it’s already supposed to do, it’s difficult to see how it could possibly manage reforms. But they’ll almost certainly find a way to blame that on disabled people, too.

PIP and UC assessments are designed to minimise a claimants’ disability, such that the government has to award as little support as possible. We see this at every level of the DWP machine, from the shocking treatment of disabled people during assessments, to governments desperately trying to move goalposts and slash payouts.

It’s unsurprising, really, that healthcare professionals leaving NHS jobs are finding the DWP intolerable. They’ve left respected roles providing treatment for illness, only to enter a role where they’re tasked with removing that self-same support. Any individual with a shred of empathy would feel the same.

Featured image via the Canary