Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: update to 30 June 2025
The quarterly update of Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics for April to June 2025. This includes quarterly statistics on Community Care Grants and Crisis Grants from 2021 onwards.
These maps highlight datazones in Scotland which are ranked in the top 20% of SWF expenditure per person since 2021. Comparison is made to the distribution of the 20% most deprived datazones as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020.
Given that SWF funds are targeted at people on low incomes, and/or people receiving benefits, then it would be expected for there to be a strong relationship between the two sets of datazones. The maps show that this is the case. Many datazones are coloured purple, indicating membership of both groups. Where greater interest may lie is those datazones which are only in one of the groups.
The blue datazones highlight relatively high levels of SWF support for areas which aren’t in the 20% most deprived. Although many are close to areas of relative deprivation, some appear to be more isolated. This may indicate local issues and differences in local authority priorities, but also highlights that pockets of deprivation can exist in areas that are relatively prosperous overall. Furthermore, the latest map only covers the period since April 2021 (as opposed to 2020), which means that it’s more likely, with a smaller number of payments mapped overall, that a wider geographical range of datazones will appear in the top 20% of payments per person. This can be seen where there are more large, rural datazones highlighted than previously.
A small number of datazones have a very low population due to local demolitions, and are therefore excluded from the ranking of highest SWF payments per person. This is because the average payment per person in these areas is skewed to unrealistic levels by the population change. If relevant, these areas are still marked as part of the 20% most deprived datazones.
Figure 1: Maps comparing top 20% of datazones receiving SWF payments per person since 2021 versus the top 20% most deprived datazones according to the SIMD
These maps cover Scotland as a whole, and also focus more closely on large urban areas to enhance local understanding. The highlighted areas are datazones which are ranked in the most deprived, and/or received the most SWF money per person.