Applicants who have died while awaiting approval of their application: FOI release

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

FOI Reference: FOI/202500474868
Date received: 8 June 2025
Date responded: 29 July 2025

Information requested

How many applicants for benefits died while awaiting approval in the last four years, broken down by year and broken down by what benefit they were waiting for and how long they were waiting?

Response

We have interpreted your request as referring to clients who died and whose benefit applications were subsequently authorised.

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 interrogate each case to establish if the applicant had 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 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

We hold extracted data for applicants of our disability benefits and Carer Support Payment whose applications were authorised after their death and have provided this in the below table:

Please note that this is management information and therefore has not been quality assured to the same standard as our Official Statistics: Social Security Scotland - Statistics

The year is based on date of death of the client.

Also attached are details of the waiting times for disability benefits and Carer Support Payment submitted by individuals who passed away before receiving a decision, but whose applications were later authorised. The wait time is recorded from the date of the initial application to the date of death. Again, this is management information and therefore has not been quality assured to the same standard as Official Statistics: Social Security Scotland - Statistics

We are committed to giving people timely decisions, while allowing sufficient time to ensure the correct information is in place to get decisions right the first time.

In addition to the cases listed in the attached table, it may be helpful to know that when a client notifies us of a terminal illness, Social Security Scotland aims to process applications identified as eligible under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness within 7 working days of receiving both a completed application form and a 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.