Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: update to 31 March 2025
The annual update of Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics for 2024-25. This includes annual statistics on Community Care Grants and Crisis grants from 2013, as well as quarterly breakdowns from 2020.
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A total of 324,830 applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund were received in 2024-25, a 6% decrease compared to 2023-24 (Table 2). The majority were for Crisis Grants (244,840, Table 6), and the others were for Community Care Grants (79,995, Table 4).
Compared to 2023-24, the number of Community Care Grant applications decreased by 8% (6,985) (Table 4, Chart 1), a second consecutive annual decrease after several years of increase. At local authority level this varied from a 32% decrease in Clackmannanshire to a 29% increase in East Renfrewshire (Table 4).
The number of Crisis Grant applications decreased by 6% (15,165) (Table 6, Chart 1) to the lowest total since before Covid. At local authority level, this varied from a 27% decrease in Dundee to a 31% increase in Orkney (Table 6).
Chart 1: Applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund – Scotland – Monthly
This chart shows time series of the numbers of applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund per quarter since April 2020, separated into the two schemes
The most common reason for Community Care Grant applications was ‘Families facing exceptional pressure’ (39% of applications) (Table 8). This reason decreased by 5% compared to 2023-24, and remains ahead of ‘Helping people to stay in the community’ (23% of applications, -22%), the most common reason before 2020-21.
Chart 2: Reasons for Application – Community Care Grants - Quarterly
This chart shows time series of the proportions of different reasons for applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund per quarter since April 2020
The most common reasons for Crisis Grant applications are different types of emergency (84% applications in 2024-25), whereas disasters such as fires and floods are less common (fewer than 1% of applications) (Table 11, Chart 3). The ‘Other’ category increased greatly at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and has mostly persisted at a higher level since, at least partly due to unresolved changes in application processes. A recent increase is due to similar issues at the application stage, and work is ongoing to fix these issues.
Within the ‘Emergency’ category, the most common reason was ‘benefit/income spent’ (111,295, 45% of applications).
Chart 3: Reasons for Application – Crisis Grants – Quarterly
This chart shows time series of the proportions of different reasons for applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund per quarter since April 2020