Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: annual update 2022-2023

From when the Scottish Welfare Fund scheme began on 1 April 2013 until 31 March 2022, 510,375 individual households have received awards totalling £395.0 million. A third of households receiving an award were families with children, while half were single person households with no children.

In 2022-23, local authorities received 92,810 applications for Community Care Grants (3% more than 2021-22) and made 48,800 awards (similar to 2021-22) – an acceptance rate of 53% (two percentage points lower than 2021-22). Expenditure on Community Care Grant awards totalled £34.9 million, which is 4% more than 2021-22. The average award was £715.

At the same time, local authorities received 288,880 applications for Crisis Grants (8% more than 2021-22) and made 186,330 awards (6% more than 2021-22); an acceptance rate of 65% (one percentage point lower than 2021-22). Expenditure on Crisis Grant awards totalled £21.1 million, 4% more than 2021-22. The average award was £113.

In 2022-23, 29% of Community Care Grant applications were repeat applications, one percentage point lower than 2021-22, and 69% of Crisis Grant applications were repeats, also one percentage point lower than 2021-22.

In 2022-23, 86% of Community Care Grant applications and 91% of Crisis Grant applications were processed within the target time limits.

Local authorities were allocated £38.0 million for Scottish Welfare Fund awards in 2022-23, including an initial £35.5 million, and a later £2.5 million top-up allocation. There was also an estimated underspend of £4.5 million carried forward from 2021-22. Of the estimated total £42.5 million available for awards this year, £56.0 million (132%) was spent by 31 March 2023. This overspend is 18 percentage points higher than the one seen in 2021-22 (114%).

Since April 2013, there have been 31,910 Tier 1 reviews for Community Care Grants, and 44,615 for Crisis Grants. Fewer than half of decisions have been revised at this stage for both Community Care Grants (47%) and Crisis Grants (42%).

We have previously highlighted data quality issues with the official statistics, discrepancies between the official statistics and management information, and quality issues for certain local authorities (described in the data quality section).

Management information to May 2022 has been provided for comparison in Tables 72 and 73, which can differ from the official statistics by a few percentage points. However, the official statistics provide much more detailed information and breakdowns that are not available from the monthly management information and remain the recommended primary source for analysis and commentary. This is likely the last time we present information on SISG returns (Table 74).