Current status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 4 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government how many online applications for a new or replacement National Entitlement Card (NEC) or Young Scot National Entitlement Card (Young Scot NEC), to access the Young Persons' Free Bus Travel Scheme, have been started since the application process opened on 10 January 2022; of these started applications, how many have been completed and submitted, and, of these submitted applications, how many have been rejected, broken down by the reason for rejection.
The Improvement Service (IS), who manage the application process, do not have the statistics on applications started available. Some online applications were submitted in advance of the 10 January 2022 application open date. At close of business on 1 March 2022, there had been a total of 201,306 online applications submitted.
The IS are able to report on the online rejection numbers only. At close of business on 1 March 2022, 47,251 applications had been rejected. Among the most common reasons for rejection were:
? Abbreviated birth certificate supplied which contains insufficient information necessary to prove that a parent is authorised to act on behalf of a child.
? Documents supplied cannot be read
? Parental ID not supplied
? Mismatch on address
? Data mismatch
? Non-compliant photo
? Documents do not pass security features checks
? Wrong date of birth
? Duplicate application
? Failed ID verification checks