Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018: progress report 2025 to 2026

1. Foreword

As Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing, I am pleased to present this eighth annual progress update on the implementation of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 covering the year from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.

During this reporting year, I am proud that the Scottish Government invested over £5.9 billion in social security payments, providing essential support to almost 2 million people.

This is support which any one of us could need at any point in our lives and is an essential pillar in the Scottish Government’s defining mission to support families with the cost of living and eradicate child poverty.

The reporting year began with the introduction of our 17th benefit: Pension Age Winter Heating Payment, Scotland’s replacement for the UK Government’s Winter Fuel Payment. This benefit provides at least £203.40 to help with heating bills for pensioners with an income under £35,000, with around 880,000 pensioners estimated to have benefited from the payment in winter 2025-26. Payments for winter 2026-27 are due to begin this month.

The reporting year’s next significant milestone was the successful completion in December 2025 of the complex process of safely and securely transferring more than 700,000 disability and carer benefit awards from the Department for Work and Pensions to Social Security Scotland in line with our 2025-26 Programme for Government commitment to do so. This means every disabled person and carer in Scotland who received the DWP’s Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Attendance Allowance or Carer's Allowance is now receiving their benefits from our fairer and more compassionate system.

The Scottish Government firmly believes in maximising the take-up of social security by challenging stigma around benefits, reducing the barriers to accessing entitlements and promoting join-up between services for people accessing vital help.

With that in mind, I was pleased to welcome Social Security Scotland’s national ‘Tackling Stigma Campaign’ which ran during February and March 2026 to improve awareness of the social security help that is available and encourage applications for benefits among key audiences. The campaign was overwhelmingly welcomed by stakeholders and as a result, the number of people within target audiences who said they would apply for a benefit if they thought they were eligible rose by 13%. These target audiences included disabled people and low-income households.

Staying with that theme, I look forward in next year’s annual report to highlighting the work set out in our newly-published 2026-31 Benefit Take-Up Strategy – a strategy which the UK Government has no equivalent of and which places social security within the wider Public Service Reform agenda by setting out a phased approach to further join-up of services, building on the achievements of our 2021-2026 Take-Up Strategy

In further recognition of the vital role played by unpaid carers, in March 2026 we launched our 18th payment: Carer Additional Person Payment. This important new payment provides support worth over £500 a year to carers who look after more than one person for at least 20 hours a week. The payment is part of a package of measures to improve carer support, with carers in Scotland now better off than anywhere else in the UK.

Also in March 2026, we published our Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 in which we announced an increased rate of £40 per week for under-1s for our pivotal Scottish Child Payment.

An estimated 12,000 children will benefit from this important increase which will take effect in 2027-28. We know that families with a baby are more likely to live in poverty or deep poverty, and this will provide valued additional support in that key first year of a child’s life.

The end of the reporting year was marked by the formal completion of the Scottish Government’s nine-year Social Security Programme - by far the largest delivery programme and transfer of powers since the devolution settlement created by the Scotland Act 1998.

It is because of the Programme’s success that Social Security Scotland now delivers its overall package of benefits, eight of which are only available in Scotland, and all of which are part of the system we have deliberately founded on the enduring principles of dignity, fairness and respect.

At a time when the need for a welfare safety net is under attack in certain sections of public life, I am even more determined than ever to protect the key principles of social security – and the significant achievements set out in this latest annual report underline clearly why that it is so essential.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing

10 November 2026