Atos Healthcare announced last week that they have changed their name to Independent Assessment Services.
Atos, along with Capita, carry out PIP assessments on behalf of the DWP.
However, it was during the period in which they were responsible for work capability assessments (WCA) for ESA that their name became associated with a desperately unfair system that has cost the lives of many claimants.
Atos is now inextricably linked with the “Atos Kills” banners carried by protestors and repeatedly featured in the media, whenever there was a story about Atos or the WCA.
Atos eventually gave up the ESA contract, which was handed over to Maximus.
Atos claim that the name change “better represents the work we do and explains that our role is to independently assess and process Personal Independence Payment (PIP) cases passed to us from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).”
Many claimants may believe that the real reason is that Atos think that enough time has passed to allow them to shed their name – and their past - without attracting too much attention.
Curiously, the domain name www.IndependentAssessmentServices.co.uk was still available at the time of writing, whilst the domain name www.independentassessmentservices.com was registered in the Cayman Islands some years ago.
Independent Assessment Services Ltd is also the name of a now defunct company
