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There are a number of factors that impact on how long it takes Social Security Scotland to make a decision on disability benefit applications, including the time taken to gather the supporting information required to make a decision on an application.

Social Security Scotland continues to work with Local Authorities, Health Boards and GP practices across the country to make it faster and easier for them to send supporting information, and is seeing improvements.

The last nine months of official statistics for Child Disability Payment shows Social Security Scotland has made decisions on new applications almost twice as fast as in the previous financial year. The latest official statistics publication can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Child Disability Payment: high level statistics to 31 December 2024.

The latest Adult Disability Payment official statistics publication shows Social Security Scotland has made faster decisions on applications over the last year, with average processing times decreasing significantly in the last ten months, when compared to the previous financial year. Latest Adult Disability Payment statistics can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment statistics to 31 January 2025

Social Security Scotland has a dedicated application route for terminally ill children and young people, and anyone in Scotland diagnosed with a terminal illness by their healthcare professional can apply for disability benefits under Special Rules for Terminal Illness. Published data shows that applications under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness are currently processed within three working days for Child Disability Payment and two working days for Adult Disability Payment.

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing the availability of safe and effective medicines that people in Scotland would benefit from. The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) assesses the clinical and cost effectiveness of newly licensed medicines on a once for Scotland basis and publishes advice for Health Boards to consider. It is expected that Health Board Area & Drug and Therapeutics Committees (ADTCs) will consider making a SMC recommended medicine, or an equivalent, available on their local or regional formulary for routine prescribing within 90 days of SMC advice being published.

Health Boards are expected to apply common principles and processes in the introduction of newly licensed medicines to facilitate consistency of approach to local decision-making. The decision to prescribe a medicine, and which medicine to prescribe, is entirely for the clinician in charge of a person’s care, having considered their clinical condition, their safety, and any relevant clinical guidance.

While the Scottish Government sets the strategic policy for the NHS in Scotland, it is NHS Boards and healthcare professionals locally who have responsibility for both service delivery and ensuring people receive the right care for them, taking into account relevant guidance, local service needs and priorities for investment.

It is therefore for NHS Boards to determine what clinical interventions they offer, while giving regard to the considerations above.

The majority of Scottish health boards participated in the 2022 UK Parkinson’s Audit which measures the quality of Parkinson’s services against international best practice. This includes Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) data from people who use Parkinson’s services.

The 2022 Audit showed Scotland outperforming the UK in terms of future care planning, and access to essential professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists.

It is for NHS Boards to make decisions and progress on the delivery of services locally, including consideration of delivering the asks proposed at the Scottish Stoma Forum in October 2023. Positive progress shared with the Scottish Government includes: agreeing that the role of a stoma forum should reflect local needs; the range of nursing support available for stoma patients is now more expansive; stoma care is included as part of the Registered Nurse core curriculum; patients can request a review of their care from their local stoma care team at any time, meaning that a formal offer of an annual review should not be required in most cases.

The results of the information gathering exercise on stoma care were presented at Scottish Executive Nurse Directors’ meetings on 5 July and 22 November 2024, informing NHS Boards of overall findings. It is for NHS Boards to deliver services locally. The Scottish Government does not plan to publish this information publicly but will share with the Scottish Stoma Forum Group by April 2025.

There are no plans for Transport Scotland to introduce a formal reporting and tracking system for antisocial behaviour as there is no requirement on all operators in this deregulated sector to collect and share this data, which will affect the coverage of any data collected. Additionally, operator thresholds for reporting antisocial behaviour will vary affecting the consistency of any shared data.

Nevertheless, Transport Scotland is working with the Confederation of Passenger Transport and operators to encourage the industry to collect more data and to similar standards to improve knowledge of antisocial behaviour on buses. This supports the recommendations from the Independent Working Group on antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, the Transport Focus Your Bus Journey survey provides an indication of perceived trends in behaviour on buses. The results for Scotland show that in 2023 5% of respondents stated that passenger behaviour caused concern (8% in England). This increased to 6% in 2024.

The Scottish Government is taking wide-ranging action to support low income families and to help those in temporary accommodation to live dignified lives.

As part of over £3 billion of investment to tackle poverty and the cost of living for families in 2025-26, we have committed £644 million in our package of benefits and payments only available in Scotland. Among these, the Scottish Child Payment is forecast to be supporting the families of around 333,000 children. We are also continuing to invest around £1 billion a year to provide 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare to all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds, helping children to get the best start in life and parents to work and earn more, and supporting families through free bus travel for all under 22s, and free school meal provision for all children in primaries 1 to 5.

We have committed to strengthening the support available to families by further expanding free school meal provision, investing to enable the expansion of breakfast clubs across Scotland, and by developing the systems needed to scrap the impact of the two-child cap by April 2026.

In 2025-26, the Scottish Government will allocate at least £15.8 million for the provision of free income maximisation support, welfare and debt advice, an increase on our allocation for these services in 2024-25.

Scottish Government modelling, published on 27 March 2025, showed that on average, households with children in the poorest 10% of households are estimated to be £2,600 a year better off in 2025-26 as result of Scottish Government policies, with this value projected to grow to an average of £3,700 a year by 2029-30.

A household offered temporary accommodation can be asked to pay a reasonable charge for any accommodation provided directly by the local authority, or a reasonable amount for accommodation supplied by another provider but paid for by the local authority. In deciding what is reasonable, the local authority should take account of the household’s earnings and what the household can afford to pay.

If the household has no income or a low income, the local authority must help the applicant apply for Housing Benefit to help cover the cost of temporary accommodation.

We recognise that there are other costs households may face when living in temporary accommodation, including travel, energy and household equipment costs.

The Scottish Government funds local authorities to administer and disburse the Scottish Welfare Fund. The fund provides emergency support and a lifeline to people in need, through crisis grants to help meet immediate short-term needs arising from exceptional circumstances and community care grants to help eligible people establish or maintain a settled home.

The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity for women and girls in Scotland and the positive impact that has on their physical, mental, and social health. Football plays a key role in this because it has a reach into communities like no other sport, and participation levels in women and girls football are at record levels.

The Scottish Government supports the Scottish FA in making football accessible for all and believes in the power of football in bringing communities together. We are also keen to support the SWPL in promoting and improving the elite women’s game to help encourage more women and girls into the sport.

Produced in partnership with UEFA, the Scottish FA’s Accelerate Our Game strategy has been designed to a provide focus to the Scottish FA’s commitment to progress the girls’ and women’s game in Scotland. The strategy aims to harness the power of women’s football by changing perceptions and empowering people to inspire the nation, whilst developing and promoting women’s football for all, enabling current and future generations to enjoy our national game equally.

In addition, the Scottish FA leads three key programmes targeting girl’s football:

• UEFA Disney Playmakers
• KDM Soccer Centres
• SPAR Future Stars Cup Square

Furthermore, sportscotland works in partnership with all 32 local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools Network. Active Schools aims to provide more and higher quality opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity before school, during lunchtime and after school, and to develop effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community. In the 2022-23 academic year, football was the second most popular activity for girls within the Active Schools programme, with girls and young women making 379,944 visits to Active Schools football sessions.

Total known direct costs were £7,792.64 including VAT. This covered publishing costs for the main report and the supporting evidence paper - A Review of Antisocial Behaviour in Scotland - Data Survey and Literature Review; travel expenses of any members/officers who claimed for in-person attendance at meetings and fact-finding visits to two local authority areas; and teas/coffees for meetings.

Members provided their services free of charge with costs - other than travel expenses, which were met by the Scottish Government - being assumed within their own organisation’s budgets. There were no meeting venue costs as these were held hybrid in Scottish Government buildings or members’ sites. Refreshments were also provided by the respective hosts for these meetings. Most engagement meetings, with stakeholders, were hybrid so incurred no direct expense.

We do not hold any other known direct costs or estimates. The group was supported by a secretariat - generally two Scottish Government officials - whose time costs were contained within existing budgets. One member did require printed copies of meeting papers - contained within a central budget. The Scottish Community Safety Network held two online engagement sessions and costs of these were met from within their existing Scottish Government grant.

The Scottish Government does not publish local authority level data for the items requested.

Scottish Government does, however, publish related data on language learning and teaching at a national level. The table below provides a summary of data from the biennial 1+2 languages survey, summarising provision of language teaching for the first additional language (known as “L2”) and the second additional language (known as “L3”) in 2019, 2021 and 2023.