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Add Scottish Carer Support Payment#1615

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vahid-ahmadi wants to merge 4 commits intomainfrom
feat/scottish-carer-support-payment-950
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Add Scottish Carer Support Payment#1615
vahid-ahmadi wants to merge 4 commits intomainfrom
feat/scottish-carer-support-payment-950

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@vahid-ahmadi vahid-ahmadi commented Apr 16, 2026

Summary

  • Implements Carer Support Payment (CSP), which replaced Carer's Allowance for carers living in Scotland (fully rolled out November 2024)
  • CSP parameters: weekly rate (£83.29 in 2025, £86.45 in 2026), Scottish Carer Supplement (£11.70/week from March 2026), and 35-hour minimum care threshold
  • Scottish residents now receive CSP instead of Carer's Allowance
  • CSP added to all benefit aggregation lists (household_benefits, hbai_benefits, hbai_household_net_income, gov_spending, social_security_income, pre_budget_change_household_benefits)
  • is_carer_for_benefits updated to recognise CSP recipients

Fixes #950

Test plan

  • Scotland carer (35+ hours) gets CSP £4,331.08/yr, CA £0
  • England carer gets CA £4,331.08/yr, CSP £0
  • Non-carer in Scotland gets neither
  • 2026 Scotland carer gets CSP with supplement £5,103.80/yr
  • CI test suite passes

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

vahid-ahmadi and others added 2 commits April 16, 2026 12:26
@vahid-ahmadi @claude
Add Scottish Carer Support Payment
3168338 
Implement Carer Support Payment (CSP) which replaced Carer's Allowance
for carers living in Scotland. Includes:
- CSP parameters: rate, supplement (from March 2026), and min hours
- CSP variable with Scotland-only eligibility
- Exclude Scottish residents from Carer's Allowance
- Add CSP to benefit aggregations, HBAI income, gov spending, and
  taxable social security income
- Update is_carer_for_benefits to recognise CSP recipients

Fixes #950.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@vahid-ahmadi @claude
Fix YAML test format for carer_support_payment
4a0ab40 
Use flat input/output format compatible with policyengine-core test
runner instead of multi-entity nested format.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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vahid-ahmadi commented Apr 16, 2026

Review findings:

  1. policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/carers_allowance.py:12 now suppresses Carer’s Allowance for all Scottish residents in all years, but CSP only starts on 2024-11-01 in the new parameters. Pre-November-2024 Scottish carers therefore lose CA with no replacement. The added tests only cover 2025+ cases, so this regression is currently untested.

  2. policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/pension_credit/guarantee_credit/minimum_guarantee/additional/severe_disability_minimum_guarantee_addition.py:29 still disqualifies the severe disability addition only when carers_allowance is present. After this PR, a Scottish claimant can move from CA to CSP and incorrectly regain the severe disability addition because carers_allowance drops to zero.

  3. policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/pension_credit/guarantee_credit/minimum_guarantee/additional/carer_minimum_guarantee_addition.py:12 still awards the Pension Credit carer addition only from carers_allowance. Scottish carers moved onto CSP will therefore lose that addition.

  4. policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/universal_credit/housing_costs_element/non_dep_deduction/uc_non_dep_deduction_exempt.py:10 still checks only receives_carers_allowance, and policyengine_uk/variables/input/care.py:13 remains CA-only as well. So Scottish CSP recipients can lose this UC housing-costs exemption even though is_carer_for_benefits was updated elsewhere.

  5. policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/housing_benefit/applicable_income/housing_benefit_applicable_income.py:19 includes carers_allowance in means-tested income but not CSP. If Scottish claimants are meant to be treated the same on linked benefits, this will undercount Housing Benefit applicable income and overstate HB awards.

Relevant guidance I checked while reviewing:

@vahid-ahmadi vahid-ahmadi requested a review from MaxGhenis April 16, 2026 12:39
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Add Scottish Carer Support Payment

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