Overview
At the time of this report, statistics about the NHS workforce in Scotland, produced by NHS Education Scotland (NES), are published as official statistics.
Statistics about the NHS workforce are widely used across the NHS and beyond, primarily to help plan services. The statistics show the demographics of the workforce as well as providing information about its growth and potential gaps. They also help to identify staff vacancies and turnover. The statistics are therefore key to understanding future training requirements, recruitment and retention and comparative benchmarking.
This report presents the findings of our assessment of NES’s workforce statistics, which we started in January 2025.
Why we did this review
NES was added to the Official Statistics (Scotland) Amendment Order in 2019. At that time, the Chief Executives of National Services Scotland and NES wrote a letter setting out their intention to transfer certain workforce data, statistical and intelligence functions from Information Services Division (ISD), now Public Health Scotland (PHS), to NES. Although workforce statistics produced by ISD were designated as ‘National Statistics’ (now called accredited official statistics) in 2010, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) agreed to suspend the accreditation of the statistics in 2019 following the change in producer organisation.
In 2022, the Head of Profession for Statistics at PHS wrote to us requesting a formal assessment of NES’s NHS Scotland Workforce statistics, CAMHS Workforce statistics and Psychology Workforce statistics. Following early investigations, our assessment team found that further work was required to ensure the statistics’ full compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics (the Code), including organisational governance. NES was also working on a range of developments, including exploring alternatives with data suppliers to improve the coherence of data definitions and coverage of the statistics. As a result, the assessment process was temporarily paused.
In 2024, PHS wrote to us explaining that substantial progress had been made and confirming that NES was ready to restart the assessment. We confirmed our intention to undertake an assessment in 2025.
Highlighted findings
NES has made significant progress in improving its governance processes and independence from PHS. For example, NES has recently appointed a lead official, who is responsible for making impartial decisions about the statistics.
The team is considering internal Code training options, as it has previously been reliant on PHS guidance and training options. We also found that NES continues to rely on PHS policies, such as its statistical disclosure and revisions policy rather than have its own policies which reinforce the independence of statistical decision making.
We found that the number of people receiving pre-release access (PRA) to the statistics is quite extensive, especially in Scottish Government directorates. Widespread use of pre-release access can pose a risk to the principle of equal access.
NES publishes technical information in various places across its data intelligence website. Users we spoke to found this difficult to navigate and suggested that all the technical information, such as data sources and methodologies, would be easier to understand if it were captured in one place. During our assessment, NES acted quickly on this finding and produced a technical document for its June 2025 statistics on the NHS and primary care workforce in Scotland.
NES engages well with its users. It carried out a user consultation exercise in 2021 and so is familiar with its key users. However, a published user engagement strategy that includes details on how and why work is prioritised would signify NES’s commitment to using ongoing user feedback to improve all its outputs.
NES has a short comparability statement, which signposts the work of the cross-UK health coherence project. NES could make the comparability of the data even clearer for users by offering its own perspective – for example, by explaining which of its workforce datasets are comparable across the UK and which are not.
Our judgement
The team at NES was very engaged during the assessment, demonstrating continuous enthusiasm to address issues and feedback raised during the process. However, based on our findings and engagement with users, we have concluded that some areas for improvement remain.
We have identified six requirements that NES needs to address for these workforce statistics (both annual and quarterly) to become accredited official statistics. These require NES to:
- continue to reinforce its autonomy from PHS by publishing its own governance procedures and statistical policies,
- keep the pre-release access (PRA) lists for all three sets of statistics under review, in particular ensuring that the range of individuals given PRA in Scottish Government have a justifiable need for it,
- publish a clear user engagement strategy so that users are aware of its commitment to address issues and corresponding timescales,
- publish more information about coherence and cross-UK comparability within its statistical releases,
- improve the presentation of the statistics so that they are easily to access and use,
- and clearly set out the reasons for its methods choices where data definitions differ from alternatives suggested by key users to ensure user confidence.
Next steps
NHS Education Scotland should meet these requirements within six months and update us on its progress.
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