Late/overdue Disability and Scottish Child Payments: 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 August 2022 to August 2024.

Request for information 2: In a monthly breakdown, the number of recorded instances of late/overdue payments of Child Disability Payment to a recipient from November 2021 to August 2024.

Request for information 3: In a monthly breakdown, the number of recorded instances of late/overdue payments of Scottish Child Payment from February 2021 to August 2024.

Request for information 4: If possible, and only if possible, please highlight the most late payment on record for each benefit type (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, 2 & 3:

Please find the information in response to questions one, two and three within the attached documentation.

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 end of July 2024, for Child Disability Payment, up to June 2024 and for Scottish Child Payment up to June 2024 can be found at:

Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment: high level statistics to 31 July 2024

Social Security Scotland - Child Disability Payment: high level statistics to 30 June 2024

Social Security Scotland - Scottish Child Payment high level statistics to June 2024

To illustrate one example, during July 2024 from a total of 667,030 Adult Disability Payments, 121 (approximately 0.01%) were recorded as late.

Request for information 4:

The most overdue payment for each benefit can be found below –

Adult Disability Payment - 54 days.
Child Disability Payment - 269 days.
Scottish Child Payment – 104 days.

In line with our definition of overdue payments these can be due to a number of reasons. Some examples of these would include many instances of qualifying benefits being incorrectly ended by another organisation and impacting our clients eligibility. It can also include issues out with our control such as waiting on a client providing bank details, or updating incorrect bank details. Social Security Scotland also undertakes additional checks where a high value payment is released, including confirming that no safeguarding issues are present. All of these reasons may lead to a payment being released beyond the date committed to on the award letter.

All of the above cases have been subsequently resolved and have now been paid.

For further context I have provided information below on the latest payment on record due to Social Security Scotland operational or system issue –

Adult Disability Payment – 54 days.
Child Disability Payment – 26 days.
Scottish Child Payment – 24 days.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400432578 - Information released - Annex

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