Adult Disability Payment (ADP) statistics: FOI release

Information requested

1) An estimate of the number of applicants who died in 2023 and 2024 (as of 2 September 2024) but were still receiving an ADP until their death was discovered by Social Security Scotland and therefore their payment was discontinued.

2) What is the longest period of time (in days) between when an ADP applicant has died and when Social Security Scotland stopped making the payment to the applicant who was deceased after they were made aware of the applicant's changing circumstances?

3) A figure or rough estimate for how much the following would have cost the taxpayer: the delay between when an ADP applicant has died and when Social Security Scotland stopped making the payment to the applicant who was deceased after they were made aware of the applicant's changing circumstances.

Response

Request for information 1:

We have interpreted this to be the number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who died while in receipt of the benefit.

The figures in the table below include new applicants and those whose cases were transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Year of Death	Number of Deaths
2023	2,997
2024 (up to and including 30 August)	4,573

It should be noted that this data is drawn from management information, which has not been quality assured to the same level as that in our Official Statistics publication. As such, these figures should be interpreted with caution.

Request for Information 2 and 3:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

To establish the longest period of time, we would need to manually access the case for each deceased Adult Disability Payment applicant to determine the date we stopped making payment after being notified of their death.

After carrying out this process, we would then need to obtain the clients benefit entitlement before being able to put a value on any delay between an Adult Disability Payment clients date of death and when Social Security Scotland stopped making payments.

Under section 12 of FOISA 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, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12. You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: 

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx

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.