Change of circumstances

There may be cases when an individual reports a change in circumstances at the same time as they request a re-determination or while a re-determination process is ongoing.

The way in which the Client Experience Team deal with the information will depend on the date when the change of circumstances occurred. 

If an individual has entitlement to some level of payment and Social Security Scotland are aware of the possibility of a change in circumstances, they are obliged to both: 

• carry out a determination without application, and  

• process the re-determination request. 

A re-determination looks at the individual’s circumstances again at the date of the determination to re-consider the facts on which the earlier determination was based.

Nothing that happens after the date of determination can be considered within the re-determination assessment. This includes the individual’s circumstances changing.  

In cases where the individual has some level of entitlement and:  

• the change of circumstances occurred on or before the determination date  

• the individual had not included that information within their initial application, and  

• the information provided would impact the assessment of their application 

the information provided by the individual relating to the change in circumstances can be included in the assessment at re-determination.

In cases where the individual has some level of entitlement (or their entitlement has been temporarily stopped) and the change of circumstances occurred after the determination date, the re-determination assessment would only take into account information that was relevant to the individual’s circumstances on the original determination date.

The change of circumstances should be processed separately and would impact the individual's entitlement from the relevant effective date.  

In cases where the individual has no entitlement to CSP and advises about a change of circumstances which happened after their original determination date, Social Security Scotland will advise them that they may wish to make a new application. This would take account of all information relevant at the new date of application.