FOI/202600511882 · FOI · cost limit
Social Security Scotland - Adult Disability Payment (ADP) application award statistics: FOI release
Information requested
The number or proportion of Adult Disability Payment applications initially refused but later awarded after reconsideration or appeal.
Response
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. This is because we would need to manually check all Adult Disability Payment (ADP) cases which were allowed following a redetermination or appeal.
We regularly publish data on the number of ADP cases which are allowed after a re determination or appeal, (Table 27 and Table 30).
Although the published data of first decisions shows that 49% of re determination cases and 52% of appeal cases are allowed at re determination or appeal, we do not know if these cases were initially disallowed, or whether their award was increased from their original decision.
To determine if these cases were initially disallowed would require specialist staff members designing specific coding to undertake the required complex analysis, something which we are not required to do under FOISA.
Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.
A manual check of 5 cases indicated that it would take 2 minutes on average to sift through each case to extract the in-scope information. On that basis, it would take 833 hours to sift through these potentially in-scope Adult Disability P
Given the volume of cases that would need to be manually checked, we don’t see any feasible way in which we could provide sufficient advice and assistance to bring the request under the cost threshold.
You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website.
It may be useful to know that if someone is unhappy with a decision and request a re determination, a different team will make a fresh decision. They will also consider any new information which the client has made available.
Social Security Scotland regularly publish Adult Disability Payment statistics which include the outcome of redeterminations and appeals of first decisions (Tables 27 and 30) however we are unable to determine if these applicants were initially disallowed without manually accessing each case.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact Please quote the FOI reference Central Correspondence Unit Email: contactus@gov.scot Phone: 0300 244 4000 The Scottish Government St Andrew's House Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG
Detected exemption language
Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.
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