Payments made by Social Security Scotland to recipients of the Carers Allowance Supplement who are living permanently abroad: FOI release

Information requested

Details of payments made by Social Security Scotland to recipients of the Carers Allowance Supplement, who are living permanently abroad.

Request for Information 1: How many applications for Carers Allowance Supplement, from applicants based outside of Scotland, have been made since the benefit was introduced in September 2018.

Request for Information 2: The number of these applications which were approved. 

Request for Information 3: The number of recipients currently in receipt of Carers Allowance Supplement, who live outside of Scotland.

Request for Information 4: A list of countries, other than Scotland, from which active applicants (i.e those currently in receipt of the benefit) for this benefit are currently based and the number of active applicants in each country.

Request for Information 5: The amount of money that has been paid out to applicants who live abroad in Carers Allowance Supplement since the benefit was introduced.

Response

Request for Information 1:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. Carers Allowance Supplement (CAS) eligibility is received via an automated data batch from DWP with eligible candidates who are then paid by Social Security Scotland. There is an application process but very few applications are received via this format. Social Security Scotland does not record information on whether an application was received or not in a way that is easy to extract from our records. At last publication there were 1,102,645 CAS payments, to understand which of these Client’s applied for CAS and lived out with Scotland a manual assessment of each payment would need to be undertaken. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example you may wish to reduce the timeframe to a specific week.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: https://www.foi.scot/how-do-i-ask

Requests for Information 2, 3, 4 & 5:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. This is because Social Security Scotland does not pay Carer’s Allowance Supplement on an ongoing basis and therefore recipients cannot be currently in receipt of this benefit. It is a payment which is received twice a year and is assessed before each payment. An automated data batch is received from DWP with eligible candidates who are then paid by Social Security Scotland.

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

However you may find it helpful to know that the total amount of Carer’s Allowance Supplement paid to clients living outside of the UK whether they were applicants or identified by the DWP data scan is £10,059.80

You may find it useful to refer to our latest publication on Carers Allowance Supplement here - Carers-Allowance-Supplement-April-2024-Tables-116508248021.xlsx

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.