Disability Assistance for Working Age People (Scotland) Regulations: equalities impact assessment (EQIA)

Recommendations and Conclusion

This Equality Impact Assessment process has identified that overall, the introduction of Adult Disability Payment to replace Personal Independence Payment has the potential to have a positive impact for people in Scotland with protected characteristics.

The potential positive impacts identified include:

• replacing Department for Work and Pensions private sector health assessments with client consultations undertaken by practitioners of Social Security Scotland with experience in the provision of health and social care, including a proportion with specific experience in mental health and learning disabilities;
• significantly reducing the number of face-to-face consultations that will need to be carried out due to our improved approach to gathering supporting information, decision making and, where a consultation is necessary, undertaking the majority of these by phone;
• making it easier for individuals with a terminal illness to be entitled to Adult Disability Payment through Special Rules Terminal Illness by allowing medical practitioners to use their clinical judgement and removing the six month time limit from our definition of terminal illness;
• helping to reduce the stress and anxiety experienced due to the perception of reaching a financial cliff edge by making rolling awards;
• improving the accuracy and consistency of decision making by properly applying the reliability criteria;
• alleviating some of the worry that can be caused in the review process by making longer awards and using a light-touch review process when client's conditions are unlikely to have changed;
• reducing stress and anxiety as a result of requesting a re-determination by providing certainty around how long a re-determination will take alongside providing a way to appeal directly to the FtT should Social Security Scotland be unable to do so within the specified timescale; and
• helping to encourage individuals to seek administrative justice should they believe Social Security Scotland has made a mistake through Short Term Assistance, mitigating a drop in the level of household income while also protecting people by making Short Term Assistance non-recoverable (except in cases of fraud or error).

Name and job title of Policy Lead:

Matthew Duff, Disability Benefits Policy Team Leader, Social Security Policy Division

Name and job title of a Deputy Director or equivalent:

Ian Davidson, Deputy Director, Social Security Policy Division

Date this version authorised:

29 December 2021