Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: Update to 30 September 2022

Summary of main points

From when the Scottish Welfare Fund scheme began on 1 April 2013 until 30 September 2022, 491,630 individual households have received awards totalling £369.0 million. A third of households receiving an award were families with children, while just over half were single person households with no children.

During July to September 2022, local authorities received 22,620 applications for Community Care Grants, an increase of 3% compared to July to September 2021. At the same time, local authorities made 12,195 awards, an increase of 5%, spending £8.6 million, an increase of 7% compared to July to September 2021. The acceptance rate was therefore 54%, three percentage points lower than during July to September 2021. Local authorities received 68,065 Crisis Grant applications in July to September 2022, a 14% increase compared to July to September 2021. At the same time, local authorities made 44,905 awards, spending £5.2 million, increases of 13% and 16% respectively compared to July to September 2021. The acceptance rate was 66%, one percentage points lower than during July to September 2021.

During July to September 2022, 29% of Community Care Grant applications and 15% of awards were repeats, the proportion of both one percentage point lower than July to September 2021 respectively. At the same time, 68% of Crisis Grant applications and 61% of awards were repeats, applications one percentage point higher, and awards one percentage point lower than July to September 2021.

From July to September 2022, 87% of Community Care Grant applications and 93% of Crisis Grant applications were processed within target times.

Local authorities have been allocated £35.5 million for Scottish Welfare Fund awards in 2022/23. There was also an estimated underspend of £4.3 million carried forward from 2021/22. Of the estimated total £39.8 million available for awards this year, £28.1 million (71%) had been spent in the first six months of the financial year.

Since April 2013, there have been 29,950 Tier 1 reviews for Community Care Grants and 40,070 for Crisis Grants. Just under half of decisions have been revised at this stage for both Community Care Grants (47%) and Crisis Grants (43%).

We have included monthly management information on Self-Isolation Support Grant applications, awards and expenditure broken down by local authority in Table 46. However, comparisons should not be made between the numbers of applications received by local authorities, particularly due to variations in the administrative systems used to apply for the grant.

In previous publications, we highlighted data quality issues with the official statistics, and discrepancies between the official statistics and management information. While there are still data quality issues in the official statistics for certain local authorities (described in the data quality section), the discrepancies between the official statistics and management information have reduced in the last few quarters at Scotland level. There are some discrepancies between monthly management information and quarterly data extracts: for Community Care Grant applications (-2% in the quarterly extract), awards (-4% in the quarterly extract) and expenditure (+3% in quarterly extract); and for Crisis Grant applications (-4% in quarterly extract), awards (-1% in quarterly data) and expenditure (+1% in quarterly data). Tables 44 and 45 provide Management information to August 2022 for comparison with the official statistics. However, the official statistics provide much more detailed information as well as breakdowns that are not available from the monthly management information and remain the recommended primary source for analysis and commentary.