WCA Activity 10: Consciousness During Waking Moments

Activity 10, consciousness during waking moments, is one of the 17 activities the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) uses to decide whether you have Limited Capability for Work. It is a physical activity in Part 1 of Schedule 2, and it is the activity that deals with blackouts, seizures, faints and any other involuntary episode in which you lose or partly lose awareness while you are awake. This guide explains exactly what the descriptors say, how the points work, and how to describe your episodes so an assessor scores them fairly.

The short version: if you have an involuntary episode of lost or altered consciousness at least once a week, you score 15 points - enough on its own to be found to have Limited Capability for Work. If those episodes happen at least once a month, you score 6 points, which combine with points from other activities towards the 15-point threshold.

What Activity 10 actually measures

This activity is not about diagnosis. There is no automatic award for epilepsy, diabetes, a heart rhythm problem or any other condition. What is scored is how often you have an involuntary episode of lost or altered consciousness that significantly disrupts your awareness or concentration. Three words in that phrase do the work:

• Involuntary. The episode has to happen to you, not something you choose. A seizure, a faint, a hypoglycaemic "hypo", a drop attack or a non-epileptic seizure all qualify; deliberately closing your eyes does not.
• Lost or altered. You do not have to collapse. "Altered" consciousness covers absence seizures, focal seizures where you remain upright but cannot respond, and episodes where you are vacant, confused or unable to function even though you have not fallen down.
• Significantly disrupted awareness or concentration. The episode has to actually interfere with what you are doing. A momentary flicker that you barely notice is different from an event that stops you in your tracks.

The exact descriptors and points

These are the descriptors as written in Schedule 2 of the Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2013. The point values are fixed in law - they are not estimates.

In plain English:

• 15 points if these episodes happen weekly or more often. This alone meets the 15-point threshold for Limited Capability for Work, and it is also a Support Group descriptor.
• 6 points if they happen monthly or more often (but less than weekly). Six points is not enough on its own, so you need points from other activities to reach 15.
• 0 points if episodes are rarer than monthly. In that case you would look to other activities for your score.

A worked example: how a real difficulty maps to points

Points make sense when you see how a real situation becomes a specific descriptor. Here is a composite example built from the kind of facts an assessor weighs. None of the figures are invented - they are the descriptor points in Schedule 2.

Imagine someone with focal epilepsy. They have a full convulsive seizure roughly once a month, and shorter episodes of altered awareness - going vacant, unable to respond for a minute or two - most weeks. The episodes come without reliable warning.

• Activity 10: the weekly episodes of altered awareness meet descriptor (a), because the rule covers altered as well as lost consciousness and the episodes significantly disrupt concentration. That is 15 points, which establishes Limited Capability for Work on its own.
• Activity 12 (awareness of everyday hazards): because episodes arrive without warning, there are recurring periods where the person cannot react to a hot hob or a moving vehicle. Depending on how often they need supervision to stay safe, this can add 6 to 15 points.
• Activity 11 (learning tasks): if medication side effects and post-episode confusion mean a moderately complex new task cannot be learned reliably, that can add further points.

This person clears 15 points comfortably and, because they meet the weekly consciousness descriptor, they also satisfy a Schedule 3 descriptor, which points towards the Support Group rather than the Work-Related Activity Group.

The reliability test applied to consciousness

The single most important idea in the WCA is that you must be able to do an activity reliably, repeatedly, safely, in a reasonable time, and for the majority of the time. An assessor is not asking whether you could manage on a good day; they are asking whether you could do it day after day in a real job. Consciousness episodes interact with this test in a particular way.

• Safely. An episode that strikes without warning makes almost any task unsafe - at a workstation, on stairs, near machinery, handling hot liquids or driving. The risk does not have to happen every shift; the point is you cannot rule it out.
• Repeatedly and in a reasonable time. If a blackout or absence interrupts a task, you may not be able to pick it back up, or you may finish far too slowly because of post-episode confusion.
• For the majority of the time. This activity has its own frequency thresholds (weekly, monthly), but the recovery period after an episode also matters for the other activities you claim, so describe how long it takes you to return to normal.

Which conditions commonly score on Activity 10

Any condition that causes involuntary episodes of lost or altered consciousness can score here. The most common are:

• Epilepsy - tonic-clonic, focal and absence seizures. See our full guide to ESA for epilepsy.
• Diabetes - hypoglycaemic episodes severe enough to disrupt awareness. See ESA for diabetes.
• Heart conditions - arrhythmias or vasovagal syncope causing fainting. See ESA for heart conditions.
• Non-epileptic attack disorder, narcolepsy with cataplexy, and severe vertigo from inner-ear conditions such as Meniere's disease.

Evidence to gather

Activity 10 turns almost entirely on frequency, so your evidence should make frequency undeniable.

• An episode diary. For each event record the date, type, how long it lasted, whether you had any warning, recovery time and any injury. Kept over three to six months, this is the strongest single document you can supply, because it shows a pattern rather than a one-off.
• A specialist letter. From your neurologist, cardiologist, diabetes team or epilepsy nurse, confirming diagnosis, episode type and current frequency.
• Your GP record and medication list. Episodes, dose changes and side effects are often logged here over years.
• A witness statement. A partner, parent or flatmate can describe what you cannot remember about an episode and your state afterwards.
• Records of harm. A&E attendances, burns, falls or a surrendered driving licence all evidence that your episodes carry real risk.

Our ESA evidence checklist walks through how to assemble and send all of this. Send copies, never originals.

Common mistakes

• Only describing the dramatic episodes. The brief, "minor" absences that happen most weeks may be exactly what lifts you from descriptor (b) to descriptor (a). Count them.
• Writing "controlled by medication". Controlled rarely means none. Say how often episodes still happen despite treatment.
• Forgetting the recovery period. The post-episode confusion and exhaustion feed the other activities you claim, even though Activity 10 itself is about the episode.
• Undercounting because you cannot remember. If you black out you may not recall every event. This is exactly why a diary and a witness statement matter.

How Activity 10 combines towards the 15-point threshold

You meet Limited Capability for Work if you score 15 points in total across the 17 activities. Physical and mental scores are added together, so Activity 10 (a physical activity) can be combined with mental and cognitive activities such as awareness of everyday hazards or learning tasks.

Two routes are common. First, the weekly descriptor scores 15 on its own and you are done. Second, the monthly descriptor scores 6, and you add points from hazard awareness, learning tasks or initiating personal actions - all of which an unpredictable consciousness condition tends to affect - to clear the threshold.

The weekly descriptor is also a Schedule 3 descriptor, which is the gateway to the Support Group (LCWRA on Universal Credit). That group has no work-related requirements and pays a higher rate. Even where no descriptor is met, the substantial-risk rule can apply if work would put your health or safety at serious risk - relevant when episodes could be triggered by stress, irregular shifts or lack of sleep.

Official sources

This guide reflects the official Work Capability Assessment rules. For the source material, see:

• GOV.UK - Employment and Support Allowance
• GOV.UK - Health conditions, disability and Universal Credit
• The Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2013 (Schedule 2 - WCA descriptors)
• Citizens Advice - Employment and Support Allowance

Guidance only, not legal advice. The WCA is under reform, with changes from 2025 onwards - always check GOV.UK for the latest rules.

Frequently Asked Questions

For the official figures, see our free WCA points calculator and what ESA is and how much it pays.