Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment (ADP) data on specific recorded Primary Disability Conditions: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1: A breakdown of monthly ADP claimants in South Lanarkshire and Scotland from March 2022 (to February 2025) for Psychiatric disorders and Neurological disease.

Request for information 2: An annual breakdown of ADP for both South Lanarkshire and Scotland since Feb 2015 by the distinct Psychiatric Disorders.

Response

Requests for information 1:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under section 14(2) of FOISA, a public authority is not required to comply with a request for information if it is identical or substantially similar to a request which it has already complied with, unless a reasonable amount of time has elapsed between the two requests.

This request is identical or substantially similar to Question 1 in your previous request with reference 202500493196, which we complied with on 9 December 2025 and asked for:

• A month count of claimants claiming Psychiatric Disorders and Neurological diseases from February 2022 to February 2025 for:

a. South Lanarkshire and
b. Scotland

The Scottish Information Commissioner's guidance on repeated requests says that in considering whether a reasonable period of time has elapsed between the previous request and the new request, there are two questions which will help the authority:

• has the information changed?
• have the circumstances changed?

In this case, the information we hold is the same as at the time of your previous request.

We have also considered the circumstances and have concluded that there has been no change. For these reasons, we consider that your request is repeated, and we are not obliged to comply with it.

Requests for information 2:

This question has been interpreted as providing information on clients within the Adult Disability Payment (ADP) caseload at February each year since 2015 with specific recorded Primary Disability Conditions.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have some the information you have requested.

This is because Social Security Scotland launched ADP with pilot programs in March 2022, before rolling out nationwide in August 2022.

Additionally, quarterly data by detailed condition is only available from April 2024 onwards following a change in the way data was extracted from our system for our publications. Specific data for the month of February each year from 2022 and data for South Lanarkshire is not available without specialist system coding and complex analysis, something which we are not required to do under FOISA.

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

Please find attached data from April 2024 and April 2025 for Scotland as a whole, which is the closest available information that we hold.

The list of conditions has been matched to ICD-10 codes (Version 2019) by our statisticians. Where an exact match wasn’t possible, the closest code(s) were chosen.

Please note: ICD-10 uses categories and subcategories. This means some conditions appear both as a specific diagnosis and as part of a broader group. For example, someone recorded with Mixed Anxiety and Depressive Disorder (F41.2) will also be counted under the broader group Anxiety Disorders (F40–F41).

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. given the low numbers of applicants with specific conditions, we are satisfied that there is a realistic prospect that releasing the information risks releasing personal information, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data
Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

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.

FOI 202500496941 - Information released - Conditions

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