Festive closure

Our office will be closed for the festive period from 25 December 2025 and will reopen on Monday 5 January 2026.

We will be open on 29, 30 and 31 December between 10am – 12pm and 2pm – 4pm. During these times, we will be focusing on handling reviews of crisis grants received due to the urgency of these applications. If you wish to request a review of a community care grant application you can do so online. Alternatively, you can call us on 5 January 2026 and we can take your application over the phone.

Our normal service resumes on 5 January 2026 at 10am.

2016-17 Statistics

SPSO took on responsibility for Scottish Welfare Fund independent reviews in April 2016. The tables below reflect the number of reviews we handled over the course of our first year of delivering this new service.

We determined 230 community care grant reviews and 207 crisis grant reviews, a total of 437.

The overall average uphold rate for crisis grant applications was 32%.

The overall average uphold rate for community care grant reviews was 43%.