Adult disability payment appeals are being delayed by up to 20 weeks at Social Security Scotland, a parliamentary committee has heard.
The First Tier Tribunal system has been impacted by a significant slow down in processing time for the agency, which administers 15 different benefits and paid out £1.9 billion last year.
This includes £942 million for Adult Disability Payment (ADP) which now supports more than 300,000 disabled people in Scotland.
Scottish conservatives’ MSP Jeremy Balfour said today: “I recently met with the First Tier Social Security Tribunals management team and was deeply concerned to learn about ADP tribunals taking up to 20 weeks to process.
“Social Security Scotland’s IT issues are causing a huge backlog for claimants. The SNP must urgently get a grip of this problem to ensure that people aren’t waiting months for a decision on their claim.”
Balfour, who has a lifelong disability, is in receipt of ADP and has campaigned for a Disability Commissioner for Scotland, raised the issue recently at Holyrood’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee.
He made a general point that the system designed by Social Security Scotland does not allow for recording how each claim handled by the agency is going.
David Wallace, the chief executive of the agency, which was set up seven years ago, admitted that there were “system limitations” that prevented a more detailed understanding of the client “journey”.
On the point about the specific delays to processing the ADP appeals, it is understood that an IT issue discovered on January 6 has affected the ability of Social Security Scotland to pass on information to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.
Mr Balfour said: “I think that the passing on of data to the First-tier Tribunal is meant to happen without paper; it is meant to happen through IT. Having spoken to a few former colleagues, there seem to be some issues with that working efficiently at the moment. Is there a problem and how quickly can that issue be resolved so that everything is not done on paper but through IT?”
Mr Wallace replied: “We have been aware of an issue whereby what we thought was being sent was not quite arriving. There has been a bit of work with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service on that. Clearly, as we have covered elsewhere, anything that is manual for us is additional work for the courts and tribunals. We do not want to see that.”
Ally MacPhail, Deputy Director of Organisational Strategy and Performance at the agency, added: “It is a live issue that we are currently managing.”
However, the 20-week delay in processing is understood to be separate to the IT issue discovered on January 6.
Mr Balfour added: “It may be helpful to get an update because at the moment it takes 20 weeks for a decision from the tribunal service. I understand that part of the reason is that it takes longer to deal with the papers, which is obviously not giving the client the best service.”
ADP tribunals are a way to appeal decisions made about Adult Disability Payments (ADPs) in Scotland. You can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal, and then to the Upper Tribunal if necessary.
A spokesperson for Social Security Scotland said: “Social Security Scotland and Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service are aware of a recent data sharing issue with the system used to transfer files to support the appeal process for our clients.
“We are working together to rectify this issue as quickly as possible and have put processes in place whilst technical fixes are being deployed and we aim to ensure there is minimal impact on people lodging an appeal now and in the future.”
