Chamber and committees

Data on the total number of care hours planned for delivery is not held centrally.

Data on the number of hours of care at home funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland is published annually by Public Health Scotland and can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Care at Home Statistics for Scotland: Support and services funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland 2023/2024 - Care at Home Statistics for Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Data are available for 2018-19 to 2023-24.

Data showing the number of hours for people assessed but yet to be delivered, and for number of additional hours of care to be delivered to those already receiving a care package is published by Public Health Scotland at local authority level. This can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Overview - People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services - Care at home - Social and community care - Healthcare system - Public Health Scotland

The list of public appointments by public body, which was published on 25 March 2025, is an exhaustive list of Ministerial regulated public appointments only. Ministerial regulated public appointments are those governed by the Ethical Standards Commissioner and the Code of Practice for Public Appointments (2022). The Code requires publication.

The list is intended to be published to always reflect recently made appointments. It was last published in October 2024, January 2025 and February 2025. It was corrected on 25 March 2025 following the identification of errors.

Officials commenced a process of methodically checking the full list for accuracy on 25 March 2025. Once complete, the list will be re-published.

The cost of the Scottish Governments Directly employed workforce rose from £239M in 2015-16 to £623M in 2023-24 - An increase of 161%.

The Scottish government publish official workforce statistics on a quarterly basis.

The latest available data, which is for December 2024 and includes a times series back to March 2012 is available here Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot.

The following tables provide a breakdown of FTE staff by directorate for December 2024 and March 2016.

Health and Social Care Partnerships provide Public Health Scotland with a weekly snapshot of the current demand for Care at Home services. The data includes information on the total number of hours of care that people were waiting to receive, following an assessment of their needs. This information is available via the following weblink: Dashboard - People requiring a social care assessment and care at home services.

Please note that the information does not include the reasons why these hours of care were yet to be provided, nor does the Scottish Government hold information on local social care staffing levels.

The Scottish Government does not hold data which would answer this question.

However, data up to 2022/23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:

Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot

Data showing the time waited between referral first contact and completion of a community care assessment service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘waiting times new clients’ tab of the Excel workbook which accompanies the publication.

Data showing the time waited between completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘Waiting times new personal care clients’ tab of the Excel workbook which accompanies the publication.

However there are a number of caveats with these data:

• The data return template sent to LAs is aggregate, and only grouped time periods are collected. Therefore it is not possible to calculate an average waiting time - only a distribution of time periods is possible.
• Many local authorities have reported difficulty in providing the information asked for in this data collection and therefore not all data is available for every year.
• Due to the gaps in the Local Authority level data, we cannot effectively aggregate to Health Board. Completeness levels for each LA can be found within the ‘Data completeness’ tab of the Excel workbook which accompanies the publication.

Due to the issues faced in collecting this data from LAs and due to the lack of completeness, this data collection has been paused while we explore alternative methods of obtaining higher quality information on eligibility criteria and the length of time people wait for services. Therefore the most recent data available is for
2022-23.

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.

Tackling health inequalities is a key part of the preventative care role for school nurses, general practice nurses and health visitors and is aligned to public health priorities to improve health and wellbeing outcomes, particularly for women and children. District nurses have a role in disease management in populations affected by health inequalities, delivered in community settings, and support people to stay healthy at home.

The Scottish Government understands the pressures faced and have invested a record £21.7 billion in health and social care in 2025-26, which includes almost £2.2 billion for social care and integration

However, it is important to note that while the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, decisions on how best to deliver services to local communities are ultimately for integration authorities and locally elected representatives to make.

While service delivery is ultimately a local responsibility, it is worth noting that the Scottish Government is taking action to reduce waiting times on a national level. On 31 March 2025 we published the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan which sets out a clear plan to reduce waiting times and delayed discharges.

The Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework, which is scheduled to be published in June 2025, will also focus on the key reform areas that will drive our model of service to be more preventative, to find risk factors sooner and raise the level of early intervention and proactive care.

The Scottish Government does not hold data which would answer this question.

However, data up to 2022-23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:

Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot

Data showing the time waited between completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘Waiting times new personal care clients’ worksheet of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.

However there are a number of caveats with these data:

• The data return template sent to LAs is aggregate, and only grouped time periods are collected. Therefore it is not possible to calculate an average waiting time – only a distribution of time periods is possible.
• Many local authorities have reported difficulty in providing the information asked for in this data collection and therefore not all data is available for every year.
• Due to the gaps in the Local Authority level data, we cannot effectively aggregate to Health Board. Completeness levels for each LA can be found within the ‘Data completeness’ tab of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.

Due to the issues faced in collecting this data from LAs and due to the lack of completeness, this data collection has been paused while we explore alternative methods of obtaining higher quality information on eligibility criteria and the length of time people wait for services. Therefore the most recent data available is for
2022-23.