Applicants who have died while awaiting a decision on their application: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

FOI Reference: FOI/202500463252
Date received: 25 April 2025
Date responded: 27 May 2025

Information requested

Request for Information 1: How many applicants for benefits died while awaiting a decision about whether they will receive a benefit in each of the last five years?

Request for Information 2: Could you provide a breakdown of what benefits they were waiting for, and at what stage the application was at, and how long they were waiting for?

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing some of the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. This is because for a number of our benefits, we would need to manually access each case to establish if the applicant died prior to a decision being made on their application. 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. Due to the volume of cases this relates to, we are unable to advise on how you may be able to narrow down the scope of your request. You may find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: https://www.foi.scot/how-do-i-ask

Request for Information 1:

We hold extracted data for applicants, for our disability benefits and Carer Support Payment, who died while awaiting a decision about whether they will receive a benefit.

Please note that this is management information and therefore has not been quality assured to the same standard as official statistics.

Request for Information 2:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. This is because it is not possible to determine what stage an application was at from our data extracts.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.

Please find attached details of the waiting time for disability benefit and Carer Support Payment applications for those who died while awaiting a decision about whether they will receive a benefit.

Please note that this is management information and therefore has not been quality assured to the same standard as official statistics.

You may find it helpful to know that if an individual is diagnosed with, or is currently living with, a terminal illness their application for disability assistance can be processed under special rules. Social Security Scotland aims to process cases identified as being eligible under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness within 7 working days of receiving a completed application form and a Benefits Assessment for Special Rules in Scotland (BASRiS) form.

About FOI

Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.