Below are a number of development plans we are working on within the team. The timelines noted are indicative and are subject to change.
There is no single source of data for the mental health and wellbeing workforce in Scotland.
To better support evidence-based workforce planning, PSD Scotland Psychology and Data group colleagues are working with colleagues across PSD Scotland directorates and NHS Boards to investigate how to improve mental health workforce data with the aim of producing a national mental health workforce report.
Work began in March 2025 and we are taking a phased approach, with phase one exploring which NHS Scotland staff to include in a report, how to identify them in workforce data, and how we might address any remaining data gaps and challenges.
In June 2026, we published the first release of statistics on the Mental Health Workforce in NHS Scotland, based on a new methodology that helps us count, for the first time, staff working in NHS Scotland mental health services for all age groups. This publication is released as Official Statistics in Development.
We have published a development plan that outlines the content of the statistics and the rationale for producing them, the timing of releases, and the expected users of the statistics.
We will continue to actively develop this methodology and the resulting statistics after the first publication – phase two of this work will focus on addressing remaining data gaps and ensuring the statistics are trustworthy, high quality and valuable to users.
If you would like to help shape these statistics or give feedback, please contact us.
Estimated time frame for phase one - August 2026
We have delayed this survey until after the Scottish Parliament Election in accordance with guidance during the pre-election period. This survey will now available in May 2026.
We are investigating the use of a new set of financial codes that will allow us to expand our current reporting on the use of agency data. This data may allow us to report on the grade of the agency doctors and to report on the use of agency Allied Health Professionals.
We are also considering the current publication timetable for these statistics. Over the last few years the processing and quality assurance processes have delayed internal publication deadlines. We are working with data providers, NHS National Services Scotland, to understand internal processes, and will be in touch with key stakeholders to understand the importance of timeliness and punctuality of these data.
Estimated Time frame: June 2026 (based on the year ending 31 March 2026)
Publication on the CNS workforce across NHS Scotland was paused in 2018 due to significant
data quality concerns. A national review, through a Short Life Working Group, was
commissioned to review the CNS role. The findings of the review were published on the 5th of
August 2021: Review into Clinical Nurse Specialist Roles. Multiple recommendations were
presented which included improvement of the CNS workforce data capture.
Through an established working group, PSD Scotland (Data Group and Nursing, Midwifery and
AHP directorate) has worked with other NHS Health Boards to conduct census surveys in 2023
and 2024 to review and improve identification and data capture of the CNS workforce and their
specialties and subspecialties.
On 2 June 2026, CNS workforce was reported as Official Statistics in Development using workforce information from eESS. A survey is available to collect feedback.
One of the requirements from the OSR was to
Within the Annual report on the NHS Scotland workforce, we plan to include a section on the comparability of NHS Scotland statistics with the workforce data in other areas of the UK. This will include a brief description of some of the key differences between the inclusion criteria used and some of the structural differences between how the NHS is organised in the different nations.
As part of ongoing work to aid in the comparison and coherence of our statistics with other nations in the UK, we will be adding GP per head of population to our dashboards. This will report on the GPs (excl. trainees) both nationally and at a health board level.
Time frame: June 2026 (based on the year ending 31 March 2026)
The nationally held Public Health Workforce data is not granular enough to provide an evidence base to support workforce planning.
As a first step in the process of improving this data, the Data Group are working with The Scottish Public Health Workforce Planning and Development Group to run a Public Health Census which will be sent to the territorial boards. This will gather more detailed information on the roles and occupations of the public health workforce.
Vacancy data are provided by NHS Boards to PSD Scotland four times a year (31 March, 30 June,
30 September, 31 December). These data cover vacant posts within the medical and dental
consultant, nursing and midwifery, and allied health professions job families and are reported in
the NHS Scotland workforce Official Statistics publication.
As NHS Boards have adopted the JobTrain system to manage recruitment activity, most Boards
now use JobTrain data to complete the vacancy surveys. On 7 March 2023, we announced our
intention to review the vacancy data. Since then, we have been exploring the potential use of
JobTrain data to support current vacancy reporting, applying the same definitions as before:
“a post which has been cleared for advert after being through the redeployment process
(internal or external advert) and remains a vacancy until an individual starts in the post”
Following feedback from NHS Boards, our investigation has focussed on assessing the quality of
information on dates and whole time equivalent (WTE) for all Agenda for Change job adverts.
This has been supported by the National Recruitment Reporting Short Life Working Group.
At present, the quality of this information is not good enough to use for national reporting. This
is due to variation in how JobTrain is used between NHS Boards, and the lack of validation
applied to data inputted into the system. In particular, the length of time a vacancy has been
open for is one of the hardest metrics to replicate from JobTrain data.
We continue to work with NHS Boards to understand their processes and how these can be
adapted to allow consistent reporting of vacancies at both a local and a national level.
This summer, we will begin producing separate recruitment activity reports. This will include a
rolling 2-week average of the number of posts advertised for each job family and sub job family
(including those that are not available in the vacancy reporting). The data will undergo a quality
assurance process with NHS Boards before determining whether these statistics can be
published as Official Statistics in Development later in the year. During the development we will
be in touch with end users to understand what is important to them.
We acknowledge our data providers support for the vacancy data collection which underpins
our publications
Estimated Time frame: Summer 2026
Currently, the main data source of the NHS Workforce data is SWISS, which is fed by ePayroll and eESS. We are working with NSS to get our data directly from eESS.
The data that is fed through to SWISS is a subset of the data from eESS, so getting it directly from eESS will allow us to expand some reporting.
Updates to the analytical pipeline will reduce the time taken in extracting and processing the data. As the source data remains the same, we do not anticipate these changes having a large effect on the numbers reported in our database, and any differences that do arise from this will be improvements in the accuracy and timeliness of the data.
October 2025
We are in the final stages of this process. We have completed the testing of the data pipeline and hope to switch this over in November (for October Data). We will then go through a process of quality assuring the subset of the data we use to produce our dashboard with the boards, using the same process we have previously done with the SWISS data. From the checks we have done so far on the data, we do not foresee any significant issues being found during this. All going well, we will use eESS for the December 30th census publication, due for publication in March.
Estimated time frame December 2025 census point, due for publication in March 2026
We have recently incorporated the General Practitioner headcount data into our NHS Scotland Official Statistics.
As part of the developments we would like to do is to produce numbers of joiners and leavers into these workforces, to match some of the statistics we do for the NHS Scotland workforce
Estimated time frame June 2025
To better inform our users about our current and future work we are in the process of developing a quarterly newsletter to update people on what data has been released and is planned for release.
Estimated time frame December 2025
There are an increasing number of medical grades contained within the Other/Other Grade category within our official statistics.
This grouping contains a range of grades, including OOH GPs, GPs working in practices run by NHS Boards, Clinical Fellows and other locally employed doctor grades.
Whilst we rebuild our analytical pipeline using eESS data we will look at what grades are being grouped into this category and create new groupings.
We will also examine ways to reduce the number of doctors reported where there is an unknown Specialty.
Estimated time frame December 2025 census point, due for publication in March 2026