DWP Permanent Secretary sets out plans for rolling out Health Transformation Programme

Giving evidence to Public Accounts Committee, Peter Schofield says Programme will cover 20 per cent of the country by 2026 and be fully operational from 2029

DWP Permanent Secretary Peter Schofield has set out the Department's plans for rolling out the Health Transformation Programme (HTP).

Initially started as a pilot in April 2021 in Marylebone and later extended to selected Birmingham postcodes in February 2022, the programme seeks to provide an integrated assessment service covering the work capability assessment (WCA) and the personal independence payment (PIP) assessment on a new digital platform.

NB – while the HTP has not yet been extended geographically, in May 2023 the DWP announced the new providers of the Functional Assessment Services that will provide the foundation for the new Health Assessment Service from 2024 to 2029, replacing the separate contracts for WCA services and PIP assessments with single contracts for all assessments in a geographic area.

With an investigation last year by the National Audit Office having found that the scale and complexity of the HTP leaves it at high risk of delay, cost overruns and not achieving its intended benefits, the Public Accounts Committee today held an evidence session with Mr Schofield to look at –

'… the aims, risk management and measures of the success of the programme. Above all, we will want to examine whether this ambitious plan is realistic and deliverable.'

Alongside answering a wide range of questions in relation to the Department's strategy for evaluating and tracking the performance of the HTP, Mr Schofield also updated the Committee on the current progress of the programme and the plans for its roll out, and for it be be fully operational from 2029 –

'… we wanted to look at radical changes to the way we deliver and … we are doing that separately in a kind of sealed sort of set of transformation areas … in London and Birmingham …

We are trying new ways of doing things … the approach of having the health assessor and the case manager working together in the same place. That means that where the case manager who is making the decision has a question, they can often go over to the next-door desk and say, “You did the assessment for this person. I’m a little confused by this. Can you explain this? Can we talk through this particular condition?”, or whatever is required. 

When you do these things in a small place and on a small scale, you can try lots of different things, and as we do that, we have an evaluation strategy to enable us to work out, as we are trying different things, what is working and what isn’t.

By 2026, we need to be ready to scale that up to around 20 per cent of the country … to give us the confidence to be able by 2027, if we decide to contract out, to set out the invitation to tender to describe the new service, which will then be operational from 2029.'

The transcript of the Public Accounts Committee's evidence session is available from parliament.uk