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A debt management service will be in place within Social Security Scotland when it is established.

Chapters 5 and 6 of Part 2 of the Act are only relevant to the assistance listed in Chapter 2 of that Part and Part 3. Once a decision has been taken to commence the relevant sections Parliament will be advised by the laying of commencement regulations.

a) Around 450 Experience panel members have responded to communications inviting people to participate in the service design for individual benefits. This includes expressing an interest in or attending a meeting, completing a survey or responding by phone.

This figure does not include communications with individual panel members on a one to one basis by email and phone, and does not include communications relating to the design of cross-cutting components for the new agency, such as the branding and website.

b) 193 panel members have attended sessions on the service design for individual benefits. Some of these individuals have attended multiple sessions.

The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 received Royal Assent on 1 June 2018. We will be reviewing and updating the privacy impact assessment, now known as a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) under the General Date Protection Regulations, accordingly. The DPIA will be published once the review is completed.

As of 14 June 2018 we have received 132 expense claims from Experience Panel members. All have been processed and reimbursed.

As far as possible we limit upfront costs for panel members by booking taxis for them where possible, meeting locally, providing options for participating by telephone, and by providing refreshments and lunch for face-to-face events.

The total number of meetings held, including focus groups and interviews over the phone and in person, is 155. These were held between June 2017 and June 2018.

The number of meetings and attendees for each project area is broken down in the following table. Additionally, 1,230 Experience Panel members have responded to one or more surveys. We also held an event for older people from ethnic minority backgrounds, which had around 100 attendees.

120 meetings have been held with the Experience Panels, other than the About Your Benefits and You survey. This includes benefits specific design work and cross cutting design for the new agency. This work is ongoing with further meetings planned.

20 communications have been sent to experience panel members, or groups within the experience panel about our research and opportunities to take part, beyond the About Your Benefits and You survey and focus groups.

This does not include follow up communications or communication with individual panel members on a one to one basis.

947 panel members have not engaged in the Experience Panels beyond the initial recruitment stage. It was made clear at the recruitment stage that members could participate as much or as little as they like.

For every piece of Experience Panels research we offer multiple channels for participation to account for different participation needs, including online, phone and face to face options. Our most recent survey has asked panel members for feedback about what is working well, and how we can improve our approach to engaging panel members. We are also working with key stakeholders to increase our engagement with these groups in our next large scale piece of research, and are reviewing non-participation to ascertain if there is anything further we can do.

As with all projects of this type, some panel members will choose not to engage preferring instead to simply be informed of what is happening, and a small number have opted to leave the panel. We will continue to recruit panel members on an annual basis to account for this.

The information requested is set out in the following table.

88 taxi journeys have been booked in Edinburgh, and 71 taxi journeys have been booked in Glasgow.