Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment assessment statistics: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1:

For each calendar year since the launch of ADP (from 2022 onwards), how many applications involved a face-to-face consultation or follow-up assessment (in-person or video) as part of the decisionmaking process?

Request for information 2:

For each year, what proportion of all successful ADP awards were made without any face-to-face assessment or direct contact with the client?

Request for information 3:

Please provide a breakdown of the above by primary medical condition category (e.g., mental health disorders, musculoskeletal, neurological), if held.

Request for information 4:

If available, please include any internal policy guidance used to determine when a face-to-face assessment is required.

Response

Request for information 1:

Consultations between Health and Social Care Practitioners and Adult Disability Payment clients may take place via phone, video call, at a local public venue or in the client’s own home.

Please find the total number of Adult Disability Payment Consultations for each year which involved a face-to-face consultation or follow-up assessment below:

Year	Visit	Video	Venue	Phone	Total
2022	4	18	0	620	642
2023	29	83	10	1930	2052
2024	20	38	3	1624	1685
2025	1	16	0	861	878
2026	0	0	0	53	53

*2026 figure accurate as of 23 January 2026

Please note that this is management information and therefore has not been quality assured to the same standard as our Official Statistics: Social Security Scotland - Statistics.

Health and Social Care is an integral part of operational delivery, supporting decision making by providing advice via case discussion and quality assurance processes in relation to new applications, reviews, redeterminations and appeals across each of the disability benefits.

Consultations are undertaken where there is specific need for additional information during the application and decision-making process or where requested by our Health and Social Care practitioners or by the client themselves.

A proportion of Health and Social Care staff undertake consultation work as part of the/their broader caseload. This is not their primary function; rather, they focus on verifying and supporting decisions through assessment of a wide range of supporting information.

Request for information 2:

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. We do not hold data that identifies which successful awards were completed without the aid of consultation. To work out what proportion of all successful ADP awards were made without consultation, we would need to go into all consultation cases, check the outcomes and then remove these from the total successful awards to come up with the figure. During a sample exercise of the 5,310 consultations to date, it was revealed it took approximately 5 minutes per case to identify the information requested.

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, requesting just visit, video and venue consultations. 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

Request for information 3:

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. We do not hold the above data. The only way to determine this information is to manually go into each consultation case and check both the outcome and the primary condition recorded and then remove these from the total data held to come up with the figure, which exceeds the upper cost limit. 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, requesting just visit, video and venue consultations.

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

Request for information 4:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. We do not have internal policy guidance to determine when a Face-to-Face assessment is required.

Consultations are undertaken where there is a specific need for additional information during the application and decision-making process, or where requested by our Health and Social Care practitioners or by the client themselves.

Any decisions around consultations are made in line with our Decision Making Guide which you can find on our website.

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

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.