Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: update to 30 June 2023

These maps highlight datazones in Scotland which are ranked in the top 20% of SWF expenditure per person. The comparison is made to the equivalent 20% most deprived datazones as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020.

Given that SWF funds are targeted at people on low incomes, and/or people receiving benefits, then it would be expected for there to be a strong relationship between the two sets of datazones.

The maps show that this is the case. Many datazones are coloured purple, indicating membership of both groups. Where greater interest may lie is those datazones which are only in one of the groups. Most of the red (most deprived) datazones that haven’t also received the most SWF funding are close to those that have, which highlights that these two measures are well aligned.

The blue datazones highlight relatively high levels of SWF support for less deprived areas. Although most correlate with concentrations of relative deprivation, some appear to be more isolated. This may indicate local issues and differences in local authority delivery priorities.

Figure 1: Maps comparing top 20% of datazones receiving SWF payments per capita versus the top 20% most deprived datazones according to the SIMD