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Social Security Scotland's strategic objectives will be introduced in the Agency's Corporate Plan. The Corporate Plan will be published shortly, as an interim document. As with everything it does, Social Security Scotland will develop and iterate its strategic objectives in collaboration with stakeholder communities. An updated version of the Corporate Plan, which reflects this consultation and collaboration, will be published next year.

The analysis of this survey will be published later in 2018. At this point, the findings will be shared with the Disability and Carer Benefits Expert Advisory Group via email. The group will be given the opportunity to discuss the findings and next steps with researchers from the Experience Panels team at their next meeting after publication, which is 1 November 2018.

As at 7 September 2018,163 staff were employed in Social Security Scotland.

The breakdown of protected characteristics are as follows:

We currently have no former DWP staff working within Social Security Scotland who have transferred under the terms of the Cabinet Office Statement of Practice.

The recruitment process to appoint new non-executive members to the Executive Advisory Body of Social Security Scotland was launched on 1 June 2018. Successful candidates have been identified and we will make the names of these non-executive members available on the Social Security Scotland website once the appointment process has fully concluded.

The first meeting of Social Security Scotland’s Audit and Assurance Committee will fall in line with the audit cycle and will take place before the end of this year.

Not all of the data requested is available. We hold a record of agreed interview dates and agreed start dates but we have no way to confirm whether a candidate actually attended the interview or ended up taking up the post.

Table A: Breakdown of diversity characteristics for candidates who applied for a vacancy in Social Security Scotland.

On the 31 August there were 150 people who transferred from the Social Security Agency Implementation Division within Social Security Directorate in the Scottish Government to Social Security Scotland. The following table provides a breakdown on protected characteristics.

The Scottish Government received more than 300 applications for the core group but, unfortunately, none of these were from black or minority ethnic communities.

Despite this, we remain committed to ensuring that the perspectives of seldom heard and hard to reach groups, including people from BME communities, are strongly reflected in the social security charter. To that end, we are working with stakeholders to run targeted focus groups in September to seek detailed feedback on the work completed to date. We will then invite representatives from each of the groups who participate in these sessions to join the core group.

The Scottish Government does not track and quantify social prescribing, although a 2017 report for the Scottish Government by Voluntary Health Scotland found this approach underway in 31 of the 32 Scottish local authority areas.