Application Priorities Update

Priority for applications:

Update from Kirsty Darwent, Chair of Redress Scotland, April 2024

As the Chair of Redress Scotland, my responsibilities include making decisions about priorities for applications and setting targets for making decisions. I have recently completed some work on these areas with support from the senior management team and the Oversight Board. This short article provides some information on priorities and targets at Redress Scotland.

Priorities for applications

Redress Scotland prioritises applications from survivors who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and survivors who are over the age of 68. I am confident that it is right to continue to prioritise these applications.

We will also now prioritise applications from survivors that have requested a review. This is to make sure that any survivor who believes the decision on their application should have been different has their right to a review responded to more quickly.

Targets for decision making

We have changed our targets for decision making. We now have more panel members and more staff to increase the number of decisions that we make. However, we do have a queue of applications which means it will take time before we reach all of our targets.

Our new targets for making decisions are:

Terminal illness priority – 30 working days

Over age of 68 priority – 30 working days

Request for review priority – 45 working days

All other applications – 90 working days

Our aim is to meet these targets in more than 80% of applications. We will also continue to write to survivors to let them know we have received their application and when this has been allocated to a sitting day for panel members to make a decision. All survivors can also ask us for regular updates on the progress of their application.

We will carefully track how well we are meeting these targets. This will allow us to assess whether any further changes are needed. We will also continue to provide reports on how well we meet the targets.

More information

If you have any questions about these changes, or would like to know more, please contact enquiries@redress.scot