Payments/awards under Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment: FOI release

Information requested

 

You asked for all payments/awards of the Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment issued since the 10 December, please detail:

• how many payments have been made
• how many payments have been made, broken down by local authority area
• how many payments have been made where the respective child the payment is being made for is the a) first or second child in that household and b) the third or greater child in that household
• how many applications have been refused

 

Response

 

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.  The reasons why we don’t have the information are explained in the Annex to this letter.

 

A news release containing information on the number of Best Start Grant payments and percentage of awarded and denied applications from 10 December 2018 to 31 January 2019, was published on 8 February 2019 https://news.gov.scot/news/best-start-grant-pays-out-gbp-2-7m. This shows the number of payments made was more than 7,000, and of those applications where a decision had been made by 31 January, around two thirds of applicants had been awarded a payment, and around one third had been denied a payment.  We expect denial rates to decrease as the benefit becomes more established and we continue to communicate about the offer and eligibility.

Please note that these are initial management information only. Official statistics, covering the first months of applications for the Best Start Grant, will be published in April 2019. More-detailed analysis will be published in a quarterly publication series starting from August 2019.

 

ANNEX

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

 

The Scottish Government does not have the information

The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for on how many payments have been made, broken down by local authority area, and how many payments have been made where the respective child the payment is being made for is the a) first or second child in that household and b) the third or greater child in that household, because this data is currently only available within the customer management system for Social Security Scotland for operational purposes, and is yet to be extracted for statistical analysis.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. 

 

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.