Take-up rates of Scottish benefits - 2026

Footnotes

1. There are currently four devolved disability benefits delivered by Social Security Scotland: Adult Disability Payment (ADP), Child Disability Payment (CDP), Pension Age Disability Payment (PADP), and Scottish Adult Disability Living Allowance (SADLA). Case transfer between PADP and the reserved benefit it replaces, Attendance Allowance, was ongoing throughout 2025, so PADP is not covered in this year’s publication. SADLA is not open for new applications, and is only available to adults who were transferred from the reserved Disability Living Allowance; as such, it is not relevant for take-up analysis.

2. Take-up rates can be defined either as the percentage of people eligible for a benefit who receive it, or as the percentage of eligible expenditure on a benefit that is paid. A headcount take-up measure requires estimating the number of people who would receive an award if they applied for a benefit, while an expenditure take-up measures requires estimating the monetary amount of an award someone would receive if they applied. We focus on the first kind of eligibility estimate here.

3. The core definition is known to not automatically cover some groups who are nonetheless defined as disabled under the Equality Act 2010, such as those with HIV, cancer, or multiple sclerosis.

4. This is also a challenge in analysing data on benefit recipients, as statistics on ADP include only the Primary Disabling Condition by default.

5. An additional challenge is that the Family Resources Survey asks about the impact of a person’s condition, rather than asking about their needs directly. This means someone who has, for example, mobility needs, but does not perceive themselves as having a long-term condition or illness, will not be asked about difficulty with mobility.

6. There are some circumstances in which disability benefit recipients need to apply to move to a different disability benefit. For example, CDP recipients need to apply to move to ADP, while SADLA recipients can choose to apply for ADP if they want to move. Moves between a reserved benefit and its devolved replacement during case-transfer did not require a new application.

7. From 21 March 2025, all adults receiving DLA in Scotland had their award transferred automatically to Scottish Adult Disability Allowance.

8. As award criteria for PIP and ADP are very similar, eligibility for the two payments is also likely to be very similar. There are larger differences between award criteria for DLA and ADP, but there is still likely to be very significant overlap in eligibility for the payments.

9. Social Security Scotland client and applicant diversity and equalities analysis for April 2025 to March 2026 - Social Security Scotland From 2025-26, data on applications includes everyone who applied for that benefit; in previous years, applicants were only included in statistics for the most recent benefit for which they applied. This has improved the reliability of the breakdowns for specific benefits for 2025-26 onwards, but means breakdowns are not directly comparable to previous years.

10. This is corroborated by DWP data for PIP, which has similar rules for those living outside the UK. In July 2026, of the 4,092,185 PIP recipients, the number living abroad was 2,251 (0.055%) and the number with an unknown UK parliamentary constituency was 3,491 (0.085%). This suggests that the low number of abroad recipients is not connected to ADP being a relatively new payment.

11. NRPF network publish quarterly data on households with NRPF status requesting or receiving support from local authorities. However, this will only be a small fraction of individuals with NRPF status, since NRPF status will also include households on time-limited work visas which are only available for jobs above an income threshold: Data reports | NRPF

12. No recourse to public funds - House of Commons Library

13. How many people are in the UK asylum system? - GOV.UK June 2024 is the latest point at which total cases in the asylum system is reported. Note that while asylum seekers have NRPF status, they do have access to state-provided accommodation and limited financial support.

14. Recent estimates of the UK’s unauthorised resident population - Migration Observatory