Early Years Assistance, Consultation on the Best Start Grant Regulations

ENABLE Scotland agrees with the Scottish Government’s proposal and with the reasons outlined which demonstrate that habitual residence is the fairest and most appropriate concept of residence to use to establish eligibility for the BSG.

ENABLE Scotland’s preference is for test 1 to be adopted. We feel basing responsibility on Child Benefit – with the flexibility outlined for cases where the individual is not in receipt of Child Benefit – will be both easier for Social Security Scotland to administer, and for claimants to understand.

It is our view that the complexity and delays associated with applications for Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit mean it would not be appropriate or effective to use these benefits to establish responsibility for a child.

We do not feel that the requirements to demonstrate responsibility for a child outlined in test 1 are invasive or unreasonable, and test 1 includes flexibility where the individual or their partner is not in receipt of Child Benefit but the child normally lives with them. We think this test is therefore fair and reasonable, and preferable to test 2.

ENABLE Scotland do not agree with this approach.

The surplus earnings regulations will mean that many low income claimants will potentially not be entitled to Universal Credit due to income received in a previous assessment period (potentially up to six months ago). The minimum income assumptions for self-employed Universal Credit claimants will lead to similar issues.

Some claimants (particularly those waiting to be assessed as having limited capability for work) may also not be entitled to Universal Credit until they have passed a work capability assessment, and this may take several months.

In these cases outlined above, people on low incomes who should be entitled to a BSG under the Scottish Government’s policy intention would not receive it on the basis of a £0 award of UC, when the £0 UC award is not in fact a reflection of their earnings being “too high” to receive a BSG, but rather an anomaly from the way UC is assessed.

Universal Credit is also problematic in its design when being used as a means to assess entitlement to other benefits, as it is not until the assessment period actually finishes that entitlement for that month is known. We believe this makes UC an unreliable basis for assessing an individual’s right to other benefits, and would be very concerned that people who should receive a BSG will miss out on what they are entitled to if this approach is adopted.

ENABLE Scotland feels that this approach would be the easiest for Social Security Scotland to administer and for claimants to understand.

ENABLE Scotland recommends that Council Tax Reduction should be added to the list of specified kinds of assistance in Regulation 8. As a means-tested income-based benefit, we feel it is appropriate to include Council Tax Reduction in this list to ensure it is a comprehensive list of income-based benefits which ensures that the BSG is targeted at and available to the lowest earners. A particular advantage of including Council Tax Reduction is that there is no surplus earnings regulation attached to this benefit, which can prove a complicating factor in assessments of entitlement to UC. This would avoid any potential scenario where an individual in receipt of Council Tax Reduction only might be excluded from receiving a BSG.

We also recommend that Child DLA should be added to this list in Regulation 8. We note the Minister’s intention in the Ministerial Foreword that: “The BSG will help support families who receive certain benefits, both in and out of work, who are feeling the impact of UK Government’s welfare reform.”

It has been well documented by organisations including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and CPAG Scotland that disability is a significant factor in the likelihood of a household living in poverty. The Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom research project reported a particular impact upon disabled people of the UK Government’s welfare reforms, specifically the “bedroom tax”.

We therefore feel it is important that the BSG is available to the families of children who have disabilities and have been assessed as eligible for Child DLA, as the BSG could help alleviate the risk of falling into poverty which we know is a particular danger for people who have disabilities.

While acknowledging the view in paragraph 60 that "costs associated with the disability of a child were better looked at through Child DLA", we would contend that these two benefits have different policy intentions as the BSG is not designed to cover costs associated with the disability of a child, but rather to provide the "best start". It would therefore be entirely appropriate for Child DLA to be a qualifying benefit for the BSG, since in the truest spirit of the policy intention, this would give the child who has disabilities – and is therefore statistically at a disadvantage – support to have the “best start” in life.

ENABLE Scotland feel that this time period should be extended.

Entitlement to access a BSG will depend on entitlement to a qualifying benefit. Many of the qualifying benefits listed frequently take longer (sometimes significantly so) than 31 days to process.

This means it is likely that an application for a BSG could be refused as a qualifying benefit has not yet been processed, only for the 31 days to have expired by the time this qualifying benefit is awarded.

This would in these circumstances force claimants to either submit a late request for re-determination for the Agency’s consideration, or make a fresh claim where a re-determination could have resolved the issue with significantly less administrative burden for the claimant and Social Security Scotland alike.

This scenario also carries the risk that an individual whose claim for a BSG is refused and who is then awarded a qualifying benefit more than 31 days after receipt of notification of the original determination may not be aware that they can request a late re-determination or submit a fresh application at all, and so will not receive the BSG they are in fact entitled to.

We feel 15 days is an acceptable time period. However, we feel it is very important that the process for submitting an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal is as clearly explained and easy to exercise as possible to ensure that claimants are aware of their right of appeal, understand this right, and are able to initiate an appeal in the least onerous manner possible.

This is particularly important for claimants who have learning disabilities, and we look forward to the provisions in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 around inclusive communication being enacted to ensure the process of submitting an appeal is clearly understood and that a simple means of triggering an appeal is available.

We feel particular care must be taken in the scenario where the Agency has failed to conduct the re-determination within the permitted time period, as it may be confusing to the claimant to find that the “appeal” (as most people will view it) that they submitted to the Agency has not been processed, yet they must submit another form asking for an appeal. We have been concerned throughout the passage of the Social Security (Scotland) Bill that this two-stage process risks claimants failing to exercise their right of appeal because they are confused by the process, frightened to challenge “the system”, of fed up fighting for what they feel they are entitled to. We urge the Scottish Government to take measures to ensure the process of re-determinations and appeals does not deter people from exercising their right of appeal, and to gather and publish detailed data about re-determinations and appeals so that any need to revise this process can be identified and acted upon.