Claims to Best Start Grant on first day of applications: FOI release

Information requested

 

You asked, based on a statement made by Shirley-Anne Somerville on December 19th 2018 that over 4,000 claims had been made to the Best Start Grant by the end of the first day of applications:

• how many of these 4000 applications were made from postcodes/addresses in Scotland
• how many of these 4000 applications were made from postcodes/addresses in England
• how many applications were made between applications opening and the 31st of December 2018
• how many of the total number of applications in December 2018 were made from postcodes/addresses in Scotland
• how many of the total number applications in December 2018 were made from postcodes/addresses in England
• how many of the total number of applications made in December 2018 resulted a payment being made prior to 31st December 2018.

 

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 applications and payments 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 applications made was almost 14,000, and number of payments made was more than 7,000 up to 31 January 2019.

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 of the 4000 applications made by the end of the first day, and in total in December 2018, were made from postcodes/addresses in Scotland or England. This is 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

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