BASRiS Has No Time Limit. Your Life Policy Still Does.

If you are searching for the DS1500 in Scotland, it is gone. For Scottish disability benefits it has been replaced by a form called the BASRiS, and the single most important thing to understand about it is that it carries no time limit. Where the old form and the Department for Work and Pensions still ask a doctor to say roughly how long someone has left, the BASRiS does not. It asks only whether the person has a progressive illness that can reasonably be expected to cause their death.

That difference is deliberate, and it is a real kindness. It means someone in Scotland can be awarded benefits under the special rules for terminal illness without a clinician being made to put a number on a prognosis that nobody can honestly give. But it also sets a trap that catches families at the worst possible moment. Your life insurance policy does not use the Scottish test. It uses its own, and that test almost always asks for death to be expected within twelve months.

So the BASRiS form is powerful for the job it was built to do — unlocking devolved Scottish benefits quickly — and close to useless on its own as the evidence for a terminal illness claim on a life policy. This page sets out both tests, lists which benefits the BASRiS covers, and explains why the two can never simply be swapped for one another.

The short answer: two tests, two purposes

There are two separate questions hiding inside "am I terminally ill", and they have different answers because they are asked by different people for different reasons.

The first is asked by the state, so that someone who is dying can get financial support without delay and without a face-to-face assessment. Scotland answers that question with the BASRiS form and a definition that contains no time limit. The second is asked by a life insurance company, so that it can decide whether to pay out the death benefit early, while you are still alive. Insurers answer that question with their own policy wording, which almost always requires a specialist to expect death within twelve months.

Both can be true at once, and often are. But it is entirely possible to satisfy the Scottish benefits test and fall short of the insurer's test on the very same day, with the very same illness, because the two are measuring different things. Understanding that is the whole point of this page, and it saves families the shock of assuming that a benefits award has already unlocked the policy.

What the BASRiS form is and who completes it

BASRiS stands for Benefits Assessment under Special Rules in Scotland. It is the document a clinician completes to confirm that a person meets the Scottish definition of terminal illness, so that a claim for a devolved benefit can be fast-tracked. It replaced the DS1500 north of the border when Social Security Scotland took over these benefits.

It can be completed by a registered doctor or a registered nurse who knows the patient's condition. There is no fee to the patient, and there is no separate assessment on top of it: the clinician's professional judgement is what the system relies on. Crucially, the clinician is not being asked to forecast a survival time. They are being asked whether the person has a progressive disease that can reasonably be expected to cause death. That is the wording that comes from the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, and it is the reason no deadline appears on the form.

The practical effect is that conditions which progress slowly, or unpredictably, can still qualify in Scotland at a point where a clinician would be unwilling to commit to a twelve-month figure. That is a genuine advantage of the Scottish system, and it is exactly where it parts company with what a life insurer will accept. We have looked at that gap in detail for one common condition in our guide to why dementia can pass the Scottish test and still fail an insurer's.

Which Scottish benefits the BASRiS unlocks

The BASRiS route applies to the disability benefits that Social Security Scotland now administers. In practice that means the ones people most often need when they are seriously ill:

• Adult Disability Payment, which has replaced Personal Independence Payment for working-age adults in Scotland. This is where the "adult disability payment terminal illness" route matters most.
• Child Disability Payment, for children and young people, which has replaced Disability Living Allowance for children.
• Pension Age Disability Payment, for people over State Pension age, which has replaced Attendance Allowance in Scotland.

Applying under the special rules changes the experience of claiming in three ways. The application is prioritised, so it is dealt with far faster than a standard claim. There is no medical assessment appointment to attend. And the award is normally made at the highest rate, without the claimant having to describe in detail how their condition affects them day to day. For someone with little energy to spare, those three things together are the difference between support arriving in time and not.

You can read Social Security Scotland's own explanation of the process on mygov.scot, which is the authoritative and free source. It is worth having a clinician who knows the illness complete the BASRiS as early as it is clinically honest to do so, because the whole value of the special rules is speed.

The rest of the UK: the SR1 replaced the DS1500

The DS1500 has been retired across the whole of the UK, not only in Scotland. For reserved benefits handled by the Department for Work and Pensions — Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Personal Independence Payment where it still applies, and the rest — the replacement is a form called the SR1.

Alongside that change, the DWP widened the definition it uses under what it calls the Special Rules for End of Life. The threshold moved from an expectation of death within six months to an expectation of death within twelve months. That brought the reserved-benefits test closer to the wording insurers use, though it is still stricter than Scotland's no-limit approach.

Source: GOV.UK, Get benefits if you might die within 12 months (Special Rules for End of Life), Department for Work and Pensions.

In Northern Ireland the benefits are administered separately by the Department for Communities, broadly in step with the rest of the UK but on its own forms and timescales; the position for Northern Ireland is set out on nidirect. The headline for the whole of the UK is the same: whichever form your part of the country uses, it is there to speed up a state benefit, and none of these forms is an insurance document.

Why your life insurer applies a different test

A life policy that includes terminal illness benefit pays the death benefit early, before death, when a claim is accepted. Because that is money leaving the insurer sooner than it otherwise would, the trigger is written tightly. The standard wording, used across the UK market, is that two registered medical practitioners — usually your specialist and the insurer's chief medical officer — must agree that the illness is expected to cause death within twelve months.

Notice what that wording does and does not require. It does not require a particular diagnosis; cancer, organ failure and neurological disease can all qualify. What it requires is a prognosis: a clinical view that death is likely within the year. That is precisely the number the Scottish system deliberately refuses to demand. So a BASRiS form, however clearly it confirms a terminal illness, does not answer the question the insurer is actually asking, because it was designed not to.

This is not the insurer being obstructive for its own sake, though it can feel that way. It is a different contract with a different purpose. It is also why a claim that looks obvious to the family can stall: the specialist may be entirely willing to confirm a terminal illness, yet unwilling to commit to "within twelve months", and without that second statement the twelve-month test is not met.

What a BASRiS form is, and is not, worth to a claim

A BASRiS form is still useful to an insurance claim. It is contemporaneous medical evidence from a clinician who knows the illness, and it confirms that a competent professional considers the condition terminal. An insurer's medical officer will read it and take it seriously. What it cannot do is substitute for the twelve-month prognosis the policy requires. If the specialist has confirmed a terminal illness for BASRiS purposes but has not addressed timescale, the insurer will usually go back and ask for that timescale specifically.

So the sensible approach, if there is a life policy in the background, is to treat the two processes as separate from the start. Get the BASRiS completed to secure the Scottish benefits, because that is fast and there is no reason to wait. Then, quite separately, ask the insurer exactly what it needs, and ask the treating specialist whether they are able to give a view on prognosis for the policy. If you are not even sure whether a mortgage-linked policy exists, our guide on how to find out today whether your mortgage has life cover walks through where to look, and if the paperwork has gone missing, claiming when the policy documents are lost covers how an insurer traces a policy from a name and a date of birth.

It is also worth checking, while there is still time and capacity to act, who the policy actually pays and whether that is still the right person. You can change some of those things and not others, which we set out in what you can still change about who receives your life insurance. And if the honest position turns out to be that there is no cash to be had from the policy while you are alive, our page on whether you can cash in a life policy after a diagnosis explains why term assurance has no value to surrender.

How common a terminal diagnosis actually is

None of this is a rare edge case. Cancer alone accounts for a very large share of the illnesses behind a terminal declaration, and Public Health Scotland publishes the standard national record of how many people are diagnosed each year.

Source: Public Health Scotland, Annual Cancer Incidence (Scotland) 2000 to 2024, published under the Open Government Licence.

The reason to sort the benefits and the insurance out early is not pessimism. It is that both systems reward acting while there is time and energy to deal with forms, and both punish delay. Support and free guidance are available throughout: Marie Curie and Macmillan Cancer Support both have benefits advisers who deal with exactly this, and neither will sell you anything.

Scotland's wider rules, and a note for cohabitants

The no-time-limit definition sits inside a broader set of Scottish rules that differ from England and Wales, and some of them matter enormously if you are not married. In Scotland a surviving cohabitant has a limited right to apply to a court for provision from an estate, but the window is short and unforgiving, which we cover in how a cohabitant in Scotland has six months to claim on the home. If your partner would rely on a workplace scheme rather than an estate, the scheme's own rules on unmarried partners apply, and those are set out in our guide to civil service death benefits and an unmarried partner.

If you have worked through all of this and found that the cover simply is not there — no mortgage policy, no adequate workplace benefit — a partner in good health may still be able to arrange protection for the household. You can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker look at what is realistic. And the wider set of practical steps that matter after a diagnosis is gathered in our hub on a terminal diagnosis and putting affairs in order.

Frequently asked questions

Is the DS1500 still used in Scotland?

No. Scotland uses the BASRiS form, completed by a registered doctor or nurse, for devolved benefits such as Adult Disability Payment, Child Disability Payment and Pension Age Disability Payment. The rest of the UK now uses the SR1 form, which replaced the DS1500 for reserved benefits handled by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Does BASRiS have a time limit?

No. The Scottish definition asks the clinician to confirm that the person has a progressive disease that can reasonably be expected to cause their death. There is no six or twelve month test attached, which is a deliberate difference from the DWP's Special Rules for End of Life, where the threshold is an expectation of death within twelve months.

Will my insurer accept a BASRiS form?

It is helpful supporting evidence, but it does not meet the policy test on its own. UK life insurers generally require death to be expected within twelve months, confirmed by a specialist. A BASRiS that confirms a terminal illness without addressing any timescale will not by itself support a claim, and the insurer will usually ask the treating doctor for a view on prognosis.