Adult Disability Payment: Applications and Payments

Further information on new applications and clients who have had their awards transferred, award types, processing times and re-determinations can be found in the associated publication page.

The application stage for Adult Disability Payment involves a two part application process. The Part 1 form gathers key personal details of the client. The impact of the client's disability is asked about in Part 2 of the application form. The exception to this is for applicants applying under the special rules for terminal illness, where there is only one part to the application, to make the process simpler and quicker. The number of new applications received is referring to the number of Part 1 applications received.

Not assessed

Department for Work and Pension publish information about Personal Independence Payment and Disability Living Allowance in the DWP benefits statistics releases.

These statistics are updated every 3 months and relate to the quarterly publications on Adult Disability Payment. These can be found on the Scottish Government website.

Data is collected, validated and published in as timely a manner as possible in accordance with the Statistics Code of Practice.

The Scotland Act 2016 devolved new powers to the Scottish Parliament in relation to social security, including responsibility for disabled benefits which had been administered to Scottish claimants by the Department for Work and Pensions. On 1 April 2020, executive competence for Personal Independence Payment and Disability Living Allowance was transferred to Scottish Government. There is a transitional period to allow administration of these benefits to be transferred, during which the Department for Work and Pensions will continue to administer their benefits on Social Security Scotland's behalf.

From 13 June 2022, people who get Personal Independence Payment and from 29 August 2022 some people who get Working Age Disability Living Allowance from the Department for Work and Pensions started to have their award transferred to Adult
Disability Payment in phases. Social Security Scotland aims to have the transfer process completed for everyone in receipt of Personal Independence Payment and Working Age Disability Living Allowance by the end of 2025.

Further details about the benefit can be found on the Scottish Government website.

1. Rounding and disclosure control
   For statistical disclosure control, figures are rounded to the nearest five for applications received and authorised. The total value of payments is rounded to the nearest ten pounds. Data is suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five applications.
   
   2) Incorrect application dates
   Quality assurance checks highlighted that a small number of cases had an application decision date on or prior to the benefit opening for applications on 21 March 2022. These cases were identified as test data and were removed from the data set.
   
   2) Missing and duplicate applications
   The data comes from 100% data cut of the case management system.
   
   Clients may make repeated applications for the same payment, for example if their first application is denied. This means that there can be several applications in the data cut from the same client.
   
   3) Authorisation and Payment
   For all applications, the date that applications were processed by client advisors is the date used to produce statistics of processed applications by month. After applications are authorised for payment by client advisors, the decision is approved by a manager, and then a payment is issued. In some cases, payments will be issued on the same day that payments are authorised by client advisors, however in other cases there can be a delay before payments are issued. Clients should receive money in their nominated account within four working days after payment is issued. In this publication, we report on the total value of payments that have been issued by the end of each month and not the payments successfully received by the applicants.
   

The data used to produce these statistics is extracted from the Social Security case management system. Extracts from this system are also used on a daily basis for internal reporting within Social Security Scotland. As such, the data is checked daily for consistency with previous extracts (i.e. do applications, decisions and payments figures increase as expected over time, and are they in proportion to each other) and compared to other sources of information, such as the number of payment instructions reported by the finance team.

Quality assurance and cleaning has been carried out on the variables used in the official statistics:

* Checking for duplicate and missing application references
* Checking application dates, processing times and payment times are within the expected ranges
* Checking applicant dates of birth are within the expected range
* Checking that payment date is present where a payment value is present
* Checking postcodes that do not match to local authorities

Once the data is aggregated and copied into the publication and supporting Excel tables, the final statistics are quality assured by a different member of the statistics team.

Revisions and corrections to previously published statistics are dealt with in accordance with the Scottish Government Statistician Group corporate policy statement on revisions and corrections.

For statistical disclosure control, figures are rounded to the nearest five for applications received and authorised. The total value of payments is rounded to the nearest ten pounds.

Data is suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five applications.