The number of deaths before receiving Adult Disability Payment: FOI release

Information requested

Request for Information 1: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2022-2023?

Request for Information 2: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2023-2024?

Request for Information 3: The number of Adult Disability Payment applicants who were considered eligible but died before receiving a payment in the financial year 2024-2025?

Response

Request for information 1, 2 and 3:

We have interpreted your request to refer to Adult Disability Payment applicants who have died in the financial years below, before an authorised decision was made on their application. We do not hold any information for applicants who have died between the approval of an application and the applicants first payment,.

The information requested is shown in the table below.

Financial Year	Number of Deaths
2022-2023	115
2023-2024	311
2024-2025 (to date)	168

It should be noted that this data is drawn from management information, which has not been quality assured to the same level as that in our Official Statistics publication. As such, this figure should be interpreted with caution.

We are committed to giving people timely decisions, while allowing sufficient time to ensure the correct information is in place to get decisions right the first time.

Where a client notifies of us of a terminal illness, Social Security Scotland aims to process cases identified as being eligible under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness within 7 working days of receiving a completed application form and a BASRiS form.

You may find it helpful to refer to our latest publications which contains a range of information on our benefits, including the average median decision time. Our latest publications for Adult Disability Payment can be found using the following link:

Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment statistics to 31 January 2025

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.