Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: Update to 31 December 2022

Information on the Scottish Welfare Fund to 31 December 2022.

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Summary of main points

From when the Scottish Welfare Fund scheme began on 1 April 2013 until 31 December 2022, 501,045 individual households have received awards totalling £381.6 million. A third of households receiving an award were families with children, while just over half were single person households with no children.

During October to December 2022, local authorities received 23,045 applications for Community Care Grants, an increase of 4% compared to October to December 2021. At the same time, local authorities made 12,355 Community Care Grant awards, an increase of 2%, spending £8.5 million, an increase of 4% compared to October to December 2021. The acceptance rate was therefore 54%, one percentage point lower than during October to December 2021. Local authorities received 67,410 Crisis Grant applications in October to December 2022, a 2% increase compared to October to December 2021. At the same time, local authorities made 42,165 Crisis Grant awards, spending £4.9 million, decreases of 4% and 1% respectively compared to October to December 2021. The acceptance rate was 63%, 4% lower than the rate during October to December 2021.

During October to December 2022, 28% of Community Care Grant applications and 13% of awards were repeats, two and three percentage points lower than October to December 2021, respectively. At the same time, 67% of Crisis Grant applications and 63% of awards were repeats, two percentage points lower, and one percentage point higher than October to December 2021, respectively.

From October to December 2022, 89% of Community Care Grant applications and 95% of Crisis Grant applications were processed within target times.

Local authorities have been allocated £35.5 million for Scottish Welfare Fund awards in 2022/23. There was also an estimated underspend of £4.4 million carried forward from 2021/22. Of the estimated total £39.9 million available for awards this year, £41.4 million (104%) had been spent in the first nine months of the financial year.

We have included monthly management information on Self-Isolation Support Grant applications, awards and expenditure broken down by local authority in Table 46. However, comparisons should not be made between the numbers of applications received by local authorities, particularly due to variations in the administrative systems used to apply for the grant.

In previous publications, we highlighted data quality issues with the official statistics, and discrepancies between the official statistics and management information. While there are still data quality issues in the official statistics for certain local authorities (described in the data quality section), the discrepancies between the official statistics and management information have reduced in the last few quarters at Scotland level. There are some discrepancies between monthly management information and quarterly data extracts: for Community Care Grant applications (+3% in the quarterly extract), awards (+6% in the quarterly extract) and expenditure (+3% in quarterly extract); and for Crisis Grant applications (-6% in quarterly extract), awards (-8% in quarterly data) and expenditure (-1% in quarterly data). Tables 44 and 45 provide Management information to February 2023 for comparison with the official statistics. However, the official statistics provide much more detailed information as well as breakdowns that are not available from the monthly management information and remain the recommended primary source for analysis and commentary.

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