Social security - cross-border amendment and case transfer revocation: Equality and Fairer Scotland Duty impact assessments considerations

Fairer Scotland Duty Impact Assessment considerations

Change 1: Amendments to add the Social Security Agreement between the United Kingdom and Gibraltar into the relevant benefit regulations.

We haven’t identified any impacts of this change.

Change 2: Amendments to the Best Start Foods and Best Start Grant regulations to make clear that people who have made a valid application to the EU Settlement Scheme and people who are joining family members are able to apply.

We haven’t identified any impacts of this change.

Change 3: Revocation and savings of Case Transfer, regulations relating to individuals to whom a DWP or DfC benefit is still paid after the Coming into Force date, and amendments to the regulations relating to individuals to whom a DWP or DfC benefit was paid in another part of the UK before moving to Scotland.

Revocation of Case Transfer

By the end of 2025 we expect to have completed transferring over 700,000 disability and carer benefit awards from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to Social Security Scotland. People whose awards are transferred do not need to apply and receive a like-for-like award with no break in entitlement.

Our case transfer process relies on postcode data held on DWP systems to identify awards that should be transferred to Scotland. This means that where this data is incorrect or incomplete, it is possible cases that should have transferred are missed. Similarly a person must be entitled to an award to have it transferred. This means that where a person’s award was incorrectly denied, but entitlement is later retroactively established, people who would have otherwise had their award transferred will not have.

By definition we cannot know how many cases have been missed, but we expect the numbers to be very low. We have already completed selecting DLA for children, Personal Independence Payment, and Carer’s Allowance awards for transfer and have asked anyone still receiving those benefits in Scotland via social media, our website, and stakeholders to contact us immediately. We are not aware of anyone contacting us to date.

Where someone is identified as falling into one of these groups, our preferred approach would be to simply transfer their award. This way they would have the same experience as someone who had their case transferred. However, the case transfer process requires DWP to provide the data associated with the client’s existing award so Social Security Scotland can make a like-for-like award without an application. Considering the very small number of people that may fall into these groups, maintaining the automated transfer processes would not be proportionate and the DWP will not facilitate a manual data sharing process. We must therefore gather the necessary data from the client themselves via an application. This also means that a like-for-like award cannot be established and that we cannot guarantee no break in payment, as we may not be able to make a decision on their application before their DWP administered award ends.

To mitigate this, we are introducing backdating to establish continuous entitlement. Where someone informs us that they have been missed for transfer, and they complete an application for the equivalent Scottish benefit within 26 weeks of informing us, we will backdate their Scottish award to the date their DWP administered award ended. A similar rule will apply where someone has since made a successful application to a Scottish benefit and later learns their previous award should have transferred. This means that ultimately people will receive the correct award for the time they would have had their case been correctly transferred.