Benefit Take-Up Strategy 2026-2031

Ministerial foreword

When people receive the support they are entitled to, it helps protect them from financial hardship, supports the wellbeing of children and families, recognises the additional costs of disability, ill health and caring responsibilities and provides a safety net from which people can live healthy and secure lives. That is why maximising benefit take-up matters. Every person, family or child who misses out on support they are entitled to is a missed opportunity to reduce poverty, improve wellbeing and build financial security for the people of Scotland.

No one should miss out on the support that they are entitled to because they do not know it exists, do not know who to turn to for advice, don’t feel safe, respected and confident accessing support or find the system too difficult to navigate. Yet we know that, for some people, these barriers are real. They are often also felt most sharply by those already facing disadvantage, including disabled people, carers, older people, minority ethnic communities, children and families, and people in rural and island communities.

Over the last five years, Scotland’s social security system has continued to grow and develop, with Social Security Scotland now providing support to around two million people. The previous Benefit Take-Up Strategy in 2021 has helped build the foundations of benefit take-up activity in Scotland, with a strong focus on raising awareness of newly devolved benefits and helping people understand what support is available.

As the system has developed, so too has our understanding of what is needed next.

How people interact with public services reflects the reality of their own life and its different stages. Whether that’s becoming a parent or carer, receiving a diagnosis, experiencing bereavement, starting a job, leaving care or trying to support their family through difficult circumstances. At those moments, people should not have to navigate a set of separate systems or multiple organisations, or become experts in the social security system, to access the help they are entitled to.

This Strategy therefore sets out how we will work towards a more joined-up, proactive and person-centred system of support that helps ensure people receive what they are entitled to. A system where services work better together, people receive the right information at the right time, and trusted organisations can help connect people to the support they need.

Improving benefit take-up fundamentally supports our mission to eradicate child poverty. The new activity in this Strategy also forms part of our on-going approach to public service reform, ensuring the people of Scotland achieve positive outcomes by helping services become more effective and efficient. This is done through ensuring they are preventative, more connected and more responsive to people’s lives.

This Strategy has been informed and shaped by evidence, stakeholder insight and lived experience. We have listened to people who have accessed social security support, to organisations who support people to do so, and to partners working in communities across Scotland. They told us about the importance of trust, clear information, practical support to apply and services that feel connected rather than fragmented. They also told us that stigma, complexity, digital exclusion, repeated requests for information and lack of joined-up support from different public and other services still prevent people from accessing their entitlements.

That insight is at the heart of this Strategy. Over the next five years, we will focus action across four areas: improving data sharing, signposting and referrals; strengthening pre-application support; delivering data-led awareness-raising, outreach and engagement; and making processes more accessible while exploring where automation can reduce administrative burdens. Taken together, these areas will help us build a system that is understood, straightforward to access and better organised around people’s lives.

The Scottish Government cannot maximise benefit take-up alone. Social Security Scotland, local authorities, the UK Government, advice providers, health and social care services, third-sector organisations, community groups and individuals all have a role to play. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of this Strategy, and to those who will help deliver its outcomes over the years ahead.

Our ambition for 2031 is clear: a Scotland where people understand their rights, know where to turn for support, and can safely access what they are entitled to with confidence – and one in which they are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. A Scotland where services work together around people’s needs, rather than expecting people to navigate complex systems alone. A Scotland where social security continues to be seen as a critical investment in people, families and communities across the country, not as a burden on public finances.

By working together and by keeping dignity, fairness and respect at the centre of everything we do, we will make meaningful progress towards that ambition.

Shirley-Anne Somerville

Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing