Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202200320761
Date received: 15 September 2022
Date responded: 18 October 2022
Information requested
The total number of, and value of, instances where benefit claimants received support where they were not entitled - because they were not residing in Scotland, or have claimed multiple instances of a specific benefit at the same time, e.g. from more than one Scottish address.
Response
Since April 2019, nine clients have been identified as having received payments while not entitled due to not residing in Scotland, with a combined value totalling £4,002.
No information is held on occurrences of claimants having claimed multiple instances of the same benefit at the same time. Each claim requires a claimant to have a National Insurance Number (NINO) and this is a unique identifier for every claim. We have recorded no instances of a claimant being in receipt of support for duplicate claims.
About FOI
Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing responses to requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.