PegSquared Weekly: Access to Work – an Interview with Alice Hastie from Sycamore Disability and Business
Published 2 days ago • 6 min read
PegSquared Weekly
Access to Work – an Interview with Alice Hastie from Sycamore Disability and Business
Introducing Alice Hastie from Sycamore Disability & Business
This email in 30 seconds:
Access to Work is a government grant that funds workplace support beyond what your employer is legally required to provide. It's brilliant, it changes lives, and right now it's in the middle of significant upheaval. Wait times are around nine months, funding is being cut at renewal, and the data behind the decisions is, frankly, poor. This week I sat down with Alice Hastie, who lives and breathes Access to Work, to demystify the process and explain what's really going on. The interview was recorded and the full video is available for viewing (attached at the bottom of this email).
Dear Reader,
This week's newsletter is a bit different. I'm introducing a new monthly feature where I interview someone whose work intersects with neurodiversity in the workplace, and I'm thrilled to be kicking it off with Alice Hastie.
Alice runs Sycamore Disability and Business and, as she puts it, "I live, breathe, sleep Access to Work. It's a 24-hour thing going on inside my brain." She supports individuals and organisations with every part of the process, keeps across the political landscape, and sees the full range of what people experience when they engage with the scheme.
I wanted to talk to Alice because Access to Work comes up constantly in my work with organisations. HR teams mention it but aren't always sure where it fits. Employees have heard of it but don't know how to access it. And right now, with the scheme going through major changes, there's more confusion than ever. So let's clear some of it up.
So What Actually Is Access to Work?
This is where Alice is brilliant at cutting through the noise. "Access to Work is a government grant," she explains, "and it's important to understand it's a grant, not a government benefit." That distinction matters because it means there aren't the same statutory rights around it. You can't go to appeal courts. It's a lot more discretionary.
The key thing for employers to understand is where Access to Work sits in relation to your existing obligations. As Alice puts it: "Access to Work kicks in to pay for the support that is beyond what you provide as a reasonable adjustment."
What counts as "reasonable" depends enormously on context. A large corporate would be expected to fund most assistive tech and possibly some coaching. A small cafe with ten employees has a very different threshold. Alice explains: "If you're a very large corporate, then there's lots of things you should be funding. Realistically, what would be considered reasonable for you as an international corporate organisation, you'd be expected to be providing most assistive tech."
But once you get into territory like full-time support workers, significant sign language interpreting, or very expensive specialist equipment, that's where Access to Work comes in. The two big factors in determining what's reasonable, in Alice's view, are "affordability and practicality."
Why This Matters for Neurodiversity Specifically
This is something I wanted to draw out, because in my experience, many neurodivergent employees don't need expensive equipment or full-time support. A lot of what helps is about ways of working: flexible communication, adjusted meeting formats, clear expectations, processing time. And as Alice confirms, "Access to Work only funds and discusses fundable support. They're not going to consider anything related to ways of working because it's not fundable."
That's a really important point. If your neurodivergent employee's main needs are around how information is communicated, how feedback is delivered, or how their day is structured, Access to Work won't cover that. That's on you as the employer. It's a reasonable adjustment, and it's your responsibility.
Alice references a pyramid model from AHEAD (Association for Higher Education Access and Disability) that I love. At the base, the goal is "to design an inclusive environment, an inclusive working environment that is generally accessible to most people." The more you design inclusively from the start, the fewer individual reasonable adjustments you need, and the fewer Access to Work applications become necessary.
As Alice says: "The aim is to design out the need for reasonable adjustments and Access to Work as much as it is possible to achieve."
How Do You Access It?
Here's where it gets complicated. Although employers will be expected to support and implement an Access to Work award, the application belongs to the employee. "The only person who can make that application is your employee," Alice explains. "They can make an application without you knowing."
In an ideal world, employer and employee work through this together. You've already done your reasonable adjustments. You've had a workplace needs assessment. You've identified what you can provide and what falls beyond that. Then you launch into the Access to Work application as a joint effort.
The reality is often messier. Alice shares one of the common horror stories: "Somebody's waited 9, 10, 11 months for some support from Access to Work and then Access to Work funds software and equipment that can't be implemented within your security policies, within your procurement policies." If the employer isn't involved in the process, there's a real risk the support that's eventually funded simply doesn't work in your environment.
There is one significant shortcut. If someone is new to a role, whether joining the organisation or moving internally, and they apply up to four weeks before they start, they'll be prioritised. "They might be spoken to within two to four weeks by Access to Work," Alice says. "So it's a really big difference." For anyone who literally cannot start work without support in place, this is essential to know about.
This is where the conversation got really eye-opening. There are two strands of change happening simultaneously.
The big political picture: The government's Get Britain Working white paper last summer flagged concerns about rising Access to Work costs and application rates. A consultation followed, then collaboration committees (whose minutes have not been published), then a National Audit Office investigation, and now a parliamentary committee requesting evidence. Alice was writing her evidence submission the day after our interview.
The government believes the increase in applications is driven by people with mental health conditions and neurodivergent conditions. But Alice is clear that the data behind this claim is shaky. "Which condition category you're put into is down to the case manager and is down to the first condition that you put on your form. If you do it alphabetically, anxiety, autism, ADHD..." She pauses. "The data is extremely poor. They bang on about it being driven by autism, ADHD and mental health issues, but that is not backed up by good evidence."
The operational changes you'll feel now: Communication is shifting from email to phone calls and post, often with very little notice. Funding decisions are getting tighter. "Anybody applying for the first time now compared to three years ago is likely to get less funding than we would have expected," Alice says. And for those with existing awards, "particularly for travel and support workers, we're seeing massive cuts when it comes to renewal."
Despite All of This...
Alice is adamant on one point, and I want to make sure it comes through clearly. "It's a fantastic scheme that changes people's lives and enables you to retain really high-skilled, valuable disabled workforce. It's not in any way a scheme that is not worth applying to. It's extremely useful. But we are fighting some challenges."
That feels like exactly the right note. Access to Work is imperfect, under pressure, and getting harder to navigate. It is also, for many disabled and neurodivergent employees, the thing that makes work possible. Both things are true.
Where to Find Alice
Alice offers one-to-one advice sessions bookable directly from her website, as well as training and consultancy for organisations looking to understand where Access to Work fits within their broader adjustments process. She also runs a Facebook group called Access to Work Claimants where employees can ask questions and get support.
You can find her atsycamorebusiness.co.uk or connect with her onLinkedInwhere, as she says, she's "normally pretty chatty about Access to Work."
Over to You
If you're an HR professional or line manager and you've been unsure where Access to Work fits alongside your reasonable adjustments, I hope this has helped clarify things. And if you're a neurodivergent employee who's been putting off applying because the process feels overwhelming, Alice's advice sessions are a brilliant place to start.
As always, if you've got questions or want to talk about how to build a more neuro-inclusive workplace, please get in touch.
See you next week,
Tania
P.S. When I asked Alice how to summarise what she does, she said: "One-on-one advice, easy to book, do it from a website, use a card, no contract, suppliers, any of that nonsense." If only every service was that straightforward.
