Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: update to 31 March 2026
The annual update of Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics for 2025-26. This includes annual statistics on Community Care Grants and Crisis grants from 2013, as well as quarterly breakdowns from 2021.
Part of
A total of 337,980 applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund were received in 2025-26, a 4% increase compared to 2024-25 (Table 2). The majority were for Crisis Grants (258,490, Table 6), and the others were for Community Care Grants (79,490, Table 4).
Compared to 2024-25, the number of Community Care Grant applications decreased by 1% (865) (Table 4, Chart 1), a third consecutive annual decrease. At local authority level this varied from a 21% decrease in Clackmannanshire to a 28% increase in Moray (Table 4).
The number of Crisis Grant applications increased by 6% (13,540) (Table 6, Chart 1), close to the total from two years ago. At local authority level, this varied from a 11% decrease in Dundee to a 38% increase in East Renfrewshire (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 2021, separated into the two schemes.
The most common reason for Community Care Grant applications was ‘Helping people to stay in the community’ (39% of applications) (Table 8, Chart 2). This reason increased by 30% compared to 2024-25, and is now ahead of ‘Families facing exceptional pressure’ (35% of applications, -11%) for the first time since before 2020-21. This change is mostly due to Glasgow’s reclassification of applications within their system rather than any particular real-world occurrence.
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 2021.
The most common reasons for Crisis Grant applications are different types of emergency (88% applications in 2025-26), 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 persisted at a higher level until 2024 when some changes were made to improve accuracy of information recorded.
Within the ‘Emergency’ category, the most common reason was ‘benefit/income spent’ (118,590, 46% 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 2021.