Scottish Child Payment: Applications and Payments

Further information on application, processing times, re-determinations and appeals can be found in the associated publication.

Not assessed

The Scottish Child Payment is the first benefit of its kind in the UK, therefore there are no comparable statistics.

These statistics are updated every 3 months. These updates coincide with our quarterly publications on Scottish Child Payment. These can be found at the Social Security Scotland website.

Data are collected, validated and published in as timely a manner as possible in accordance with the Statistics Code of Practice. Data are published quarterly and can be found on the Social Security Scotland website.

Scottish Child Payment was introduced through secondary legislation, using the powers to top up a reserved benefit contained in section 79 of the Social Security Scotland Act 2018.

Social Security Scotland - the executive agency of Scottish Government responsible for delivering social security benefits for Scotland - began taking applications for Scottish Child Payment on 9 November 2020, following an announcement by the then Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People that the benefit would be open for applications in advance of its official launch on 15 February 2021 to help manage the expected demand.

1. Rounding and disclosure control
   
   Application and outcome figures have been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five applications or payments.
   
   2) Missing and duplicate applications
   
   The data comes from 100% data cut of the case management system.
   
   The data cut was checked for applications where the field relating to application date was blank. These applications represent temporary 'prospect cases', which are created when clients contact Social Security Scotland without a National Insurance number, and are later replaced once a National Insurance number is received from the applicant. Any such applications are therefore duplicates and are excluded from the statistics.
   
   3) Incorrect application dates
   
   Quality assurance checks highlighted that a small number of cases (50) had an application date prior to the benefit opening for applications on 9 November 2020. These cases were confirmed by operational colleagues to be genuine applications with an application date entered in error. For the purpose of this publication these cases have been reported as having been received in the month of November 2020.
   
   4) Authorisation and Payment
   
   To manage the anticipated demand, Scottish Child Payment opened for applications from 9 November 2020, ahead of its official launch on 15 February 2021. Anyone applying for Scottish Child Payment in this application window was made aware that they would not receive a decision until after 15 February 2021, and that the first payments would be made to clients from the end of February 2021 onwards.
   
   Throughout the application window, client advisors began processing applications subject to an eligibility check on 15 February. The outcomes of all applications processed during this time were temporary and subject to change until the benefit officially launched and a final check was carried out to establish the entitlement for each case.
   
   If a client advisor assessed an application and processed it as approved - subject to an automatic eligibility check on 15 February - then the month of decision would reflect the month the client advisor originally processed the application. This is why there are applications attributed to the months before the official launch of the benefit within this dataset.
   
   If a client advisor assessed an application as a denial - subject to the final check on 15 February - then the application was flagged but not processed. Due to the design of Social Security Scotland's case management system, these applications had to be formally denied on or after the 15 February to avoid denial letters being issued to clients before the final eligibility check had taken place. This is why there are no processed denials in the months before the official launch of the benefit.
   
   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 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 are 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
* Check applicant dates of birth are within the expected range
* Check 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.

The geographical area (i.e. Council Areas ) for this dataset is based on applicants or clients' postcode information. Some postcode information cannot be matched to a Scottish geographical area because their postcode is not on the Scottish Statistics Postcode Lookup file used to match postcode to geographical area. This can be because some applications did not include correct postcode information, or the postcode was too new to be on the postcode lookup file. Consequently, those applications and/or payments with unknown geographical area are excluded from this dataset.

Postcodes are linked to client profiles and data extracts are automatically updated in the case of a client changing address. As a result, postcodes reflect the latest address of clients and may not be the same as the address at the time of application. Therefore a small number of addresses may not reflect the correct local authority area at the time of application, decision or payment.

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.

Ongoing data quality issues and revisions made to the statistics are detailed in our Data and Methodology Changes document.

Figures have been rounded to the nearest five for statistical disclosure control. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose figures that are fewer than five.

Any cell in this dataset which is blank contains suppressed data. Therefore, caution should be exercised if summary data is calculated; it may include blank cells in which it will not be a true representation of geographical area totals.