Carer Support Payment

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.

Not assessed

Not assessed

These statistics are updated every 3 months and relate to the quarterly publications on Carer Support 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.

Carer Support Payment is a replacement for Carer's Allowance, which is currently administered by Department for Work and Pensions, in Scotland. Carer
Support Payment is administered by Social Security Scotland. From 20 November 2023, Carer Support Payment opened for new applications in the pilot areas of Dundee City, Na h-Eileanan Siar and Perth and Kinross. On 24 June 2024, Carer Support Payment launched in the three further pilot local authority areas of Angus, North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire. Carer Support Payment was rolled out to seven additional areas from August 2024, and was made available nationally from 4 November 2024. People in Scotland currently in receipt of Carer's Allowance will have their benefits transferred to Carer Support Payment. This process began in February 2024. The transfer process happens automatically, with no need for carers to do anything. Social Security Scotland will write to carers in advance of their benefits transferring. This transfer process has started across the country.

Not assessed

The data used to produce official statistics are the same as the data extracted from the case management system on a daily basis that is used 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. Additional quality assurance and cleaning has been carried out on the variables used in the official statistics to:

* Check for duplicate and missing application references.
* Check for duplicate and missing applicant identification numbers.
* Check application dates are within the expected ranges.
* Check that payment date is present where a payment value is present.
* Check postcode lengths are within the expected ranges and check postcodes that do not match to local authorities
* Remove a small number of test applications which were used to test the case management system.

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. The final documents are checked by the lead statistician

Each updated publication of Carer Support Payment statistics may include revisions going back to November 2023. This is because each time figures are published they will be based from a new 100% data cut from the case management system, which can include retrospective changes to data going back to November 2023. More recent months tend to be subject to a greater degree of revision than more distant ones.

Application and outcome figures have been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. The number of payments has been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five applications: denoted with an asterisk [*] in the open data.