Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202500453740
Date received: 20 February 2025
Date responded: 19 March 2025
Information requested
Request for Information 1: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2022-2023?
Request for Information 2: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2023-2024?
Request for Information 3: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2024-2025?
Response
Request for information 1, 2 and 3:
We have interpreted your request to refer to Adult Disability Payment applicants who have died in the financial years below, before an authorised decision was made on their application. We do not hold any information for applicants who have died between the approval of an application and the applicants first payment,.
The information requested is shown in the table below.
Financial Year | Number of Deaths |
2022-2023 | 115 |
2023-2024 | 311 |
2024-2025 (to date) | 168 |
It should be noted that this data is drawn from management information, which has not been quality assured to the same level as that in our Official Statistics publication. As such, this figure should be interpreted with caution.
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.
Where a client notifies of us of a terminal illness, 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 BASRiS form.
You may find it helpful to refer to our latest publications which contains a range of information on our benefits, including the average median decision time. Our latest publications for Adult Disability Payment can be found using the following link:
Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment statistics to 31 January 2025
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.