Individuals shielding receiving food boxes during lockdown: FOI release

Information requested

The following, broken down by month since the start of lockdown, starting from April 2020:
1. How many individuals were receiving Scottish Government food boxes?
2. How many of the above individuals were officially shielding?
3. How many individuals were eligible for a food box but did not receive one?
4. How many food boxes were not distributed after being collated?

Response

The number of people who were shielding and who were requesting and receiving boxes over the period 3 April to 31 July 2020 changed daily and cannot therefore be provided on a monthly basis. We have therefore provided figures relevant to the final day of each month but also monthly totals for boxes that were packed and delivered or not. Only those shielding were eligible to apply for grocery boxes. 

The discrepancy between the number of people registered for free grocery boxes, and the number of boxes requested, is because people who were shielding were able to request more than one box, if they had dependents or others in their household, who were also not able to leave the house to buy groceries.
 

	30-Apr	31-May	30-Jun	31-Jul
Number of people shielding (as at this date)	170,911	179,728	181,075	180,228
Number of people shielding who were registered for grocery boxes (as at this date)	43,713	50,022	50,768	35,858
Number of grocery boxes being requested per week (as at this date)	61,798	71,438	70,014	48,948
Number of people shielding who were not requesting a grocery box (as at this date)	127,198	129,706	130,307	144,370
	3-30 April	1-31 May	1-30 June	1-31 July
Number of boxes packed but rejected or not delivered due to access problem or other delivery failure	1,836	3,607	2,362	1,770

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