Access to Work cuts lock disabled actor out of her career: ''Will I ever be on stage again?'

When artist Renu Arora was hit by a bus and dragged under its wheel in 2017, she feared she would never work as an actor again but Access to Work payments have offered her a lifeline.

“I had a near-death experience … and for about a year or so, I didn’t think I could work again because I’m a wheelchair user now,” she tells Big Issue.

“But it was some brilliant colleagues in my industry who were saying, ‘well, of course you can, because the skillset’s all still there, but you’re just doing it sitting down.'”

As a self-described ‘sit-down artist,’ Arora has enjoyed great success – working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC, and the Southbank Centre, among other places.

But a Department for Work and Pensions decision means the future is uncertain. Her Access to Work grant has been slashed by 80%, leaving her shellshocked.

“With this cut in place, I’m locked out of my entire career,” she said. “It feels like an iron gate has come down, and behind the iron gate is my career. I just can’t get to it.”

Access to Work is the government’s flagship scheme designed to help disabled people stay in employment. Grants cover costs beyond reasonable workplace adjustments, including specialist equipment, support workers, interpreters and travel. Around 75,000 people currently receive support through the scheme.

But since early 2024, Acess to Work recipients have reported huge cuts to grants at renewal stage. Big Issue has spoken to a blind NHS psychologist and a deaf council worker – among others – who have suffered sudden, unexplained cuts.

Meanwhile, the scheme has been beset by delays: the average application processing time surged nearly fourfold over the four years to November 2025.

The DWP has pledged to reform the system, recently hiring 500 new staff to deal with applications. New manpower can’t come soon enough: in June, the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee found evidence of delays at every stage of the Access to Work process.

Disabled advocates have also accused the service of stealth cuts: the proportion of rejected applications rose by more than 12% in 2024-25, and by another 22% between April and October 2025-26.

Arora’s own support has been cut from 45 hours to 20 per week, with the hourly rate for the role reduced from £30 to £17.50. Her job aide has been removed completely – she told Big Issue this amounts to tens of thousands of pounds of cuts.

The timing could hardly have been worse. In the same month she learned her Access to Work award would be cut, Arora secured two of the biggest achievements of her career: funding from Arts Council England and a prestigious Peggy Ramsay Foundation Award to develop The Burgundy Book. The musical is based on her accident and recovery but the funding is for the production, not for her own support worker.

“We’ve got a world-class team working with us to create this enormous publicly funded project,” Arora said. “The government has given with one hand and taken with the other in the same month.”

“They’ve slashed it based on an arbitrary error… They made a massive error about the amount of hours I work in the week.”

Read more:

• The DWP is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of disabled people. Here’s how to overhaul it
• How to manage your money if you become ill or disabled
• Disabled people could face benefit cuts – even if they cannot work, Citizens Advice warns

The reduction leaves her unable to pay the experienced support workers she relies on. She has appealed the decision, but says the process has been agonising.

“You’ve made a massive error, and you’re not willing to correct the error,” she said. “Then you put me through weeks, if not months, of hell. It is hell.”

Without the support, she fears not only for the future of The Burgundy Book, but for her entire career.

“I’m watching my peers worry about rehearsal schedules and their next commissions,” she said. “And I’m staring down the barrel of: will I ever be on stage again?”

During the assessment process, Arora says she was also told there was a move towards using AI and other technology in place of some human support. She believes that fundamentally misunderstands what she needs to do her job.

“Human support and care cannot be outsourced by a machine. It just literally cannot be,” she said.

If her appeal fails, she says she will be left unable to work and increasingly isolated.

“I’m housebound now. I literally cannot get to work,” she said. “It’s the isolation… It’s a profoundly lonely place to be.”

A DWP spokesperson said the department was looking into Arora’s reconsideration request.

“Access to Work is a lifeline for disabled people and those with health conditions, helping them to start and stay in work, but demand for the scheme has grown significantly and the number of people supported has nearly doubled in five years,” they told Big Issue.

“We know from employee and employer feedback that we inherited issues in the scheme, which is why we’re working with disabled people and their organisations to improve it.”

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