Late/overdue payments of Adult Disability Payment and Scottish Child Payment: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1: In a monthly breakdown, the number of recorded instances of late/overdue payments of Adult Disability Payment to a recipient from May 2023 to May 2024.

Request for information 2: In a monthly breakdown, the number of recorded instances of late/overdue payments of Scottish Child Payment from May 2023 to May 2024.

Request for information 3: If possible, and only if possible, please highlight the most late payment on record (in terms of days gone past without the benefit being paid.

Response

With reference to the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, Social Security Scotland define a late payment as one which is made beyond the date committed to on award letters when a determination was made.

Social Security Scotland actively monitors the progress of all payments made. Exceptions do occur and manual intervention is required to correct exceptions, and this will normally lead to the credit occurring after the initially expected date.

Request for information 1 and 2:

Please find below a table containing the requested information, for the period May 2023 to May 2024:

Month and Year	ADP Count	SCP Count
May 2023	130	128
June 2023	220	123
July 2023	68	32
August 2023	156	45
September 2023	301	42
October 2023	180	15
November 2023	104	23
December 2023	259	7
January 2024	75	16
February 2024	124	15
March 2024	151	23
April 2024	145	25
May 2024	157	21
Total	2,070	515

To provide context to the figures above it may be helpful to review these in conjunction with published statistics of total payments made in the period. The latest publications providing the total number of payments for Adult Disability Payment (ADP), up to April 2024, and for Scottish Child Payment (SCP), up to March 2024, can be found at:

Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment: high level statistics to 30 April 2024

Social Security Scotland - Scottish Child Payment: high level statistics to 31 March 2024

For example, during March 2024, from a total of 493,365 ADP payments, 151 (approximately 0.03%) were recorded as late. During the same period, from a total of 221,210 SCP payments, 23 (approximately 0.01%) were recorded as late.

Request for information 3:

By the above definition of a late payment, the latest payment on record across Adult Disability Payment and Scottish Child Payment, during the period May 2023 to May 2024, is 54 days. The latest payment on record for this period occurred as it was a high value payment. There are circumstances which must be considered before Social Security Scotland release a high value payment. Additional checks are required, including confirming that no safeguarding issues are present. This may lead to a payment being released beyond the date committed to on the award letter.

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.