Breakdown of SAAS overpayments from 2019-20 to 2022-23: FOI release
- Published
- 23 January 2024
- Topic
- Public sector
- FOI reference
- 202200324230
- Date received
- 4 March 2022
- Date responded
- 28 November 2022
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
A breakdown of SAAS overpayments from 2019-20 to 2022-23.
- The total number of people who received an overpayment. (It should be noted that students are paid bursaries they are entitled to based on information provided, either a change in individual’s circumstances or withdrawal from courses are the main reasons that generate an overpayment which is recovered).
- The monetary sum of the grant overpayment.
- Breakdown for total number of people who received a grant overpayment.
Response
1.
|
Financial Year |
Number of people* |
|
2019/20 |
8,360 |
|
2020/21 |
6,190 |
|
2021/22 |
8,730 |
|
2022/23 (April) |
340 |
|
2022/23 (May – September) |
2,755 |
Note: Numbers are rounded to the nearest 5 for compliance with the Statistics Code of Practice.
*For 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and April 2022 the information provided is instances of overpayment and it is possible that a person has multiple overpayments.
2.
|
Financial Year |
Sum of overpayments |
|
2019/20 |
£4,927,000 |
|
2020/21 |
£3,614,000 |
|
2021/22 |
£5,216,000 |
|
2022/23 (April – September 2022) |
£2,001,000 |
Note: Monetary amounts are rounded to the nearest £1,000.
3. For the financial years 2019/20 through to April 2022, our overpayment system did not collect this level of data. In order to provide this data we would need to manually check over 20,000 student records. A manual review of this magnitude would take over 1,600 hours. Section 12 of FOISA states that public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit (currently set at £600). To provide this would be over the cost limit exceptions. Therefore, your request for the financial years stated above is refused as it exceeds the upper cost limit.
We introduced a new overpayment system in May 2022 and now provide this level of analysis from May 2022 to 30th September 2022 (inclusive). For the 2,755 people who received overpayments in this period, 3,390 distinct debt records were created (as some students receive overpayments of multiple types of funding). This analysis is shown below.
|
Reason |
No of overpayment records |
|
Recovery as per bursary entitlement conditions |
15 |
|
Insufficient evidence |
75 |
|
Fraud investigation |
25 |
|
Change of Circumstances |
1,345 |
|
Withdrawal |
1,930 |
|
Total |
3,390 |
Note: Numbers are rounded to the nearest 5 for compliance with the Statistics Code of Practice.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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