Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202500486190
Date received: 24 September 2025
Date responded: 22 October 2025
Information requested
Request for Information 1: Confirmation of when (month and year) Social Security Scotland began to reclaim money that’s recognised as
(i) Official Error
(ii)Fraud
Request for Information 2: The current total amount of money Social Security Scotland estimates has been paid out but is deemed to be
(i) Official error
(ii) Fraud
Please state the two total amounts separately.
Request for Information 3: The total amount of money that has been recovered by Social Security Scotland in the last four years that was deemed to be fraud.
Please state the total amount recovered broken down by the years 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25, 2025/26
Please also state what each recovered figure is as percentage of the total of the balance that’s owed to Social Security Scotland.
Request for Information 4: The total amount of money that has been recovered by Social Security Scotland in the last four years that was deemed to be official error.
Please state the total amount recovered broken down by the years 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25, 2025/26.
Please also state what each recovered figure is as a percentage of the total of the balance that’s owed to Social Security Scotland.
Request for Information 5: The total number of instances of fraud in which money has been recovered by Social Security Scotland.
Please reveal that total number broken down by type of benefit. Please include the number of instances of fraud that related to a certain type of benefit and what that is as percentage of the total.
For example, ‘151 instances of fraud involved ADP payments, which was 6% of the total number of instances overall'
Response
You have asked specifically about official error and fraud overpayments. We define official error as errors made by Social Security Scotland, such as through human error or system error. We only recover official error overpayments if the error is one that an individual could reasonably be expected to notice.
Social Security Scotland does not decide when fraud has been committed; that is for the justice system. Therefore, we do not classify a behaviour as fraud until conviction by the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service, or if the Crown Procurator Fiscal Service has decided on a non-court disposal as an alternative to prosecution.
You can find more information about our preventative approach to Error and Fraud in our Error Control and Counter Fraud Strategies. Further reporting on overpayments and fraud is due to be published in our Annual Accounts for 2024-2025 on 11 November 2025.
Request for Information 1: We began to reclaim money recognised as official error in October 2019. We began to reclaim money recognised as fraud in December 2022.
Request for Information 2:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. We do not have an estimated value for official error or fraud across all of our benefits.
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.
It may interest you to know that we have published statistical estimates of official error for two of our benefits so far, Best Start Foods and Scottish Child Payment.
Work is continuing in developing estimates of the monetary value of official error in our other benefits and estimating the levels of overpayment in our benefits due to fraud. You can read about this in our Statistical Plan.
Request for information 3 and 5:
An exemption under section 30(c) of FOISA (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs) applies to the information requested. Disclosing this information would substantially prejudice our ability to prevent and detect fraud.
Established fraud risk management theory maintains that a threat actor’s decision to commit fraud is informed by their assessment of three main factors: motivation, rationalisation and opportunity. The risk of fraud against Social Security Scotland has been identified through commissioned threat assessments combined with the experience of similar organisations.
Addressing this risk requires a multi layered approach using prevention, detection and investigation principles, with prevention as the first line of defence. Part of the prevention approach is to restrict the information made available that would be indicative of capacity, capability, tactics and resources.
The assessment of a threat actor’s opportunity relates to the perceived ease of achieving success balanced against the risk of detection and severity of punishment. Increased opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities, and/or decreased risk of detection and punishment (or simply a perception of this) will have directly aggravating impacts on our fraud risk profile – increasing the number of threat actors who would seek to test our defences which could in turn undermine the effectiveness of our fraud response due to those increased volumes of attacks. After careful consideration and assessment we have concluded that release of this data would prejudice the ability of Social Security Scotland to effectively carry out this function. The risk of compromise relates to both the ability to obtain and maintain evidence. This would constitute substantial prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs in terms of the exemption.
This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. We recognise that there is a public interest in disclosing information as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate. However, there is a greater public interest in maintaining the Agency’s ability to prevent fraudulent activity and thus protecting the public purse from potentially increased loss.
Request for information 4:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.
This is because when processing the recovery of an overpayment we do not record the classification of the error that caused the overpayment. Therefore, we would need to manually access every recovery made during the requested time period to discover whether it was classified as official error. 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. For example, picking a specific benefit in a specific time-frame where there would be a more limited number of overpayment recoveries. You may also 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
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.