The capability for work questionnaire: the UC50 is now the WCA50

The capability for work questionnaire is the form DWP sends when it needs to decide how far a health condition limits your capability for work. Until recently there were two of them: the UC50 for Universal Credit and the ESA50 for Employment and Support Allowance. Both have been replaced by a single form, the WCA50, and older versions are still accepted where a claim is already running. Most people still search for it as the UC50, and staff still say UC50, so treat the two names as the same thing. It is not a claim form. Filling one in without being asked achieves nothing, and the form says so on the first page. It goes back to the Health Assessment Advisory Service, the DWP contractor that carries out assessments in your region, not to your jobcentre.

A questionnaire follows a referral, and a referral normally follows a fit note. You can self-certify for the first seven days of an illness. Beyond that you need a fit note, and if your condition limits how much work you can do for longer than 28 days you may be referred for a Work Capability Assessment. A single fit note covering 29 days or more can trigger a referral on its own. Some situations skip the assessment entirely rather than merely speeding it up. Pregnancy where working would risk your health or the baby's, chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer, a hospital stay of 24 hours or more, dialysis and similar treatments, and being prevented from working by law all mean you are treated in law as having limited capability for work, or for work and work-related activity, without being assessed for it. Earning more than £881 a month can mean no referral is made at all.

Most of the form is tick boxes, and most of the decision is not. Under each activity the tick is followed by a free text box asking you to explain, and that box is what the healthcare professional and the decision maker actually read. A tick with nothing under it gives them the answer but not the reason, and a descriptor is decided on the reason. The form also asks for a picture of an ordinary day, and there is a large other information box at the end for anything that did not fit elsewhere. Use it. Carers, friends and relatives can write in it too, as long as you give their contact details in the section that asks for them. If you need more room, a separate sheet with your National Insurance number on it is accepted.

Send copies of medical information you already have. The provider asks for reports, care plans and treatment plans from GPs, hospital doctors, specialist nurses, community psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and social or support workers, plus test and scan results, your current prescription list, and a seizure or symptom diary if your condition varies from day to day. It does not want photographs, internet printouts, leaflets about your medication, letters about other benefits, appointment letters or your fit notes. Do not pay for new evidence and never send originals. Write your National Insurance number on every page you enclose, and put the documents loose in the envelope rather than attaching them to the form. Keep a photocopy of what you sent: if the decision goes against you it is your only record of what you said.

There is no legal time limit on you. The time limits sit on DWP, which has to send a reminder at least three weeks after the questionnaire and then wait at least one more week before a decision maker can treat you as not having limited capability for work. Even then, if the form arrives before that decision is made, it cannot be made and the normal assessment resumes. None of that is an invitation to be late: the covering letter gives a date, missing it can stop or change your payment, and the onus of showing a good reason falls on you. The form has a question asking whether you are sending it back late and why, so answer it. Where a mental health condition is the reason nothing came back, an assessment is usually arranged anyway.