Along with thousands of organisations and practitioners, we have signed the open letter to the Secretaries of State about the threat to Access to Work. We have also written and sent a letter on behalf of ITC members, see below. 

In addition, we are encouraging our members to submit a response to the consultation and write separately to their MP.

Use this template to send a letter to your MP . 

Hear Jess Thom, Artistic Director of Touretteshero, speak about the impact these changes have had:

Jess Thom: My job hasn’t changed, my disability hasn’t changed, so why has my support changed? 

Dear Secretary of State 

Along with thousands of cultural organisations and practitioners, we have co-signed an open letter to you about the threat to Access to Work. 

We are writing on behalf of the independent theatre sector to amplify this message and offer our assistance. 

ITC (Independent Theatre Council) is the management association and representative body for 450 professional performing arts organisations throughout the UK. We are concerned that proposals in the Department for Work and Pensions’ “Pathways to Work: reforming benefits and support to get Britain working” Green Paper (currently in consultation) will negatively impact the employment of disabled practitioners, artists and workers in this sector.  

ITC represents many disabled-led companies whose ground-breaking work has changed the face of theatre and been an inspiration across the world, including: Graeae, Extant, Touretteshero, Deafinitely Theatre, Vital Xposure, Candoco Dance, FormidAbility, Diverse City, Fingersmiths, CoDa Dance, Mind The Gap, Art With a Heart, and Selina Thompson.  

The Access to Work scheme is vital to these organisations and many more of our companies committed to engaging and employing disabled artists and staff. 

Already, the Access to Work scheme is seriously flawed (10-month waiting times for assessments, limits to minimum wage for support workers, caps on entitlement to hours of support, refusal of vital equipment). The system needs constructive reform based on the aim of supporting disabled people into work rather than cost-cutting. 

We have been made aware that Access to Work case managers are implementing cuts and making decisions which have had a disastrous impact on the working lives of disabled people in the theatre sector. The Artistic Director of Touretteshero – Jess Thom has recently lost vital Access to Work support, threatening her role leading the company – A career-ending decision. Jenny Sealey, Artistic Director of Graeae, has written about the impact on their company and related artists. Graeae employs over 200 Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent practitioners each year and meets the shortfall in access support to the tune of almost £80,000 per year through fundraising. This is not sustainable and is threatening the employment of disabled artists. These are some of the issues that the Graeae team are facing: 

• People having Universal Credit cut and being told they must work more, even when their permitted work falls within the pre-agreed levels and have had a Workplace Capability Assessment 

• Delays to processing Access to Work claims of up to 10 months – meaning employees (or employers) have to put up the cost of paying for 10 months’ access themselves with no guarantee of recompense 

• Misinformation and confusion from Access to Work – different eligibility rules apply in different regions, and sometimes from assessor to assessor 

• Access to Work are informing applicants that they now only pay access workers minimum wage – requiring the individual or employer to pay the rest 

• Access to Work are telling employers they will no longer pay for equipment costs 

 Disability Arts Online Decode Data Report provide further details of the problems the sector is facing with Access to Work. 

Access All Areas has identified a crisis emerging in the cultural sector, where the employment rates for disabled people are significantly lower. 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.  

Access to Work is essential in meeting the cost of support workers, software, equipment, adaptations, coaching, and training, to ensure no organisation is ever in a position where it cannot afford to employ a disabled person.  

Cultural organisations are already struggling to meet the rising costs of producing their work in a difficult funding environment. They will be unable to replace the funding provided by Access to Work to support disabled colleagues.  

Reductions in funding to only pay support workers minimum wage will require cultural organisations to either find substitute funding or break union guidelines on minimum pay for cultural workers in our sector. Cultural workers often require support workers with specialist skills whose rates are significantly higher than minimum wage. 

These proposed changes will reverse the progress made in the employment of disabled people in the cultural sector. They will jeopardise access to jobs, creative development, and attendance at arts events, and exclude a generation of disabled artists, cultural workers, and leaders from the very spaces they help define. 

We make the following requests and suggestions: 

• Consult effectively before implementing any changes to the system. The voices of disabled people: artists, cultural workers, and disabled-led organisations must be central to this process. Without their expertise and lived experience, these reforms will cause irreversible damage. (We can help refer you to experienced leaders in this field.) 

• Commit to improve Access to Work. Work with those most affected to develop new proposals that strengthen the programme. Ensure consistency and fairness. 

• Any changes to benefits or support systems must be rigorously tested to ensure they do not create new barriers for disabled people in accessing, participating in, or leading cultural life and wider society. 

Yours sincerely 

Charlotte Jones 

CEO 

Independent Theatre Council