TRICKY questions over the decision to award a new £184m disability assessment contract to the Eye’s favourite outsourcing giant, Atos, are to be raised in the Lords this week.
The French service company has already been roundly condemned for the way it mishandled work capability assessments for disabled people (see another shocking example below). But now cross-party peers are concerned that Atos has failed to fulfil the promises made in its tender to run one of four regional contracts to assess the eligibility of hundreds of thousands more disabled people for the new personal independence payments (PIP) – a failure that will cause disabled clients extreme difficulties.
Atos claimed in the tender that it had “contractually agreed” with 22 NHS and private health subcontractors to provide a network of 740 assessment centres across London and the south of England. But in reality there are only eight subcontractors and neither Atos nor the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is able to say how many of the promised 740 centres will actually materialise. Thus many disabled people with mobility and care needs will face longer journeys – up to 90 minutes by public transport – to reach their assessment appointments, rather than the maximum 60 minutes originally promised by Atos.
Dropped out
In the document, Atos claimed it had an “extensive” network of 16 NHS trusts, two private hospital chains and four physiotherapy providers ready to provide sites for assessments. But nearly a year after it was awarded the contract it has emerged that 12 of the trusts and both the private healthcare providers have dropped out, leaving Atos with just four NHS and four physiotherapy providers. Many of the NHS trusts named in the tender have also said that they did not, as Atos had claimed, “contractually agree to providing accommodation”.
