Rejected Best Start Grant applications from addresses outside of Scotland: FOI release

Information requested

 

You asked how many applications for the Best Start Grant have come from addresses outside of Scotland, (i.e. a postcode not in a Scottish local authority), how many applications have been made in total, and how many have been rejected.

Response

 

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don’t have the information are explained in the Annex to this letter.

A Scottish Government news release containing information on the number of Best Start Grant applications and payments from 10 December 2018 to 31 January 2019, was published on 8 February 2019. This shows the number of applications made was almost 14,000, and of those applications where a decision had been made by 31 January, around two thirds of applicants had been awarded a payment, and around one third had been denied a payment.

Please note that these are initial management information only. Official statistics, covering the first months of applications for the Best Start Grant, will be published in April 2019. More-detailed analysis will be published in a quarterly publication series starting from August 2019.

 

ANNEX
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

The Scottish Government does not have the information

The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for on how many applications for the Best Start Grant have come from addresses outside of Scotland. This is because this data is currently only available within the customer management system for Social Security Scotland for operational purposes, and is yet to be extracted for statistical analysis.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

 

About FOI

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