While the largest increases in spend are for people with mental health conditions and learning disabilities, most expenditure goes on grants for deaf and blind people

@rnib.bsky.social says many blind/partially sighted people are "falling out of the workforce because of the delays"

(6/)

Everyone I spoke to for this piece said the scheme is "incredible, when it works", but at the moment, it's not working

FOIs to DWP found some people are waiting >9.5 months for a decision and many who have had support for years are suddenly getting it cut

(4/)

The scheme - often called the “best kept secret in UK policy” - has existed since 1994 to provide assistance for disabled people to get or retain employment, such as a powered wheelchair or accessible transport to work

There are now >67,000 receiving support through it

(3/)

The number of people not working because of long-term sickness shot up during Covid

Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, announced £5 billion in welfare cuts last week to 'get Britain working' - but relatively little was said about Access to Work

(2/)

This 'your year in review' trend has gone too far. I do not need to be reminded of the many, many hours I've waited for Bolts in 2024

This affects smaller, artisan chocolatiers more than larger manufacturers like Cadbury and Nestlé

Smaller brands say they have been badly affected because they often use a higher % of cocoa, have shorter-term contracts with farmers and have often paid above the commodity price already

(4/)

The result? The price on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) rose from $4,000 a tonne in January to $12,000 in April and was still over $10,000 last week

(3/)

The price of cocoa beans has more than doubled in the past year

Ghana and the Côte d’Ivoire jointly account for two thirds of the world’s cocoa bean production

Both saw extreme rainfall last December, which caused the plants to rot with black pod disease, followed by a drought in February

(2/)

Took a little break to touch some grass

What a paragraph

Here's the full geographic breakdown

A couple of cities – notably Bristol and Edinburgh – are bucking the trend, with cinemas performing better on the whole than last year

The biggest branches in major cities performed particularly badly over the past year, while the biggest improvements were in smaller, independent cinemas