Best Start Grant: business and regulatory impact assessment

Costs

The Scottish Fiscal Commission ( SFC) is responsible for producing independent forecasts of devolved social security expenditure. For BSG Pregnancy and Baby payment, the SFC will publish forecasts alongside the laying of the BSG regulations.

Based on assumptions from the SFC model, in the first full year of running 2018-19, we estimate that there will be 12,500 BSG Pregnancy and Baby payments with a total cost of £5.5m. Once the Early Learning and School payments are added, we estimate that the total number of payments annually will be in the region of 39,000 at a cost of £12.1m, based on 2019-20 figures.

Scottish Firms Impact Test

Scottish businesses, including the third sector, responded to A New Future for Social Security consultation ^[10] during summer 2016. Responses were received from 14 private businesses and 5 business organisations all of which requested that their responses remain anonymous.

Stakeholder events were also run in tandem to obtain as wide a view as possible on the forthcoming Scottish social security system, including the BSG. Views were received from many different types of interested party as possible, such as Engender,

Inclusion Scotland, Scottish Youth Parliament, Coalition of Carers, SAMH, Scottish Pensioners Forum, CEMVO, the Multicultural Family Centre, Cyrenians, Scottish Refugee Council, Deaf Action, CAS, CPAG, Scottish Rural, Parliament and the Poverty Alliance, Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Scottish Human Rights Commission, SCVO, the Humanist Society, Quaker Social Action, LGBT Youth Scotland, Woman's Aid, Coalition for Racial Equalities and Rights, and the Scottish Disability Equalities Forum.