New statistics on Clinical Nurse Specialists

2nd June 2026

In June 2026 Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland) are publishing new statistics on the number of clinical nurse Specialists in NHSScotland. These are released as Official Statistics in Development (OSID). In line with the Office for Statistics Regulation’s (OSR) requirements for OSID, we present this development plan which outlines the content of the statistics and the rationale for producing them, the timing of releases, and the expected users of the statistics. We also provide details of how to get in touch with us to provide feedback on this plan and on the statistics once they are available.

What statistics will be published?

These will be new statistics about the number of clinical nurse specialists and their specialties:

  • The headcount and WTE of CNS
    • NHS Board
    • Specialty and sub-specialty
    • NHS Board
    • Band
  • The percentage who are over 55
  • The percentage who are Female

Why are we publishing these statistics?

Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNSs) are an integral part of the workforce of NHS Scotland and the wider health and social care landscape across the public, independent and third sectors. The role involves delivering services and supporting people and families who require specialist care across hospital and community settings 1

Publication on the CNS workforce across NHS Scotland was paused in 2018 due to significant data quality concerns. A national review was commissioned to review the CNS role. The findings of the review presented multiple recommendations which included improvement of the CNS workforce data capture.

As part of this improvement, a national CNS steering group worked on refining the combinations of specialty and subspecialty, and prepared Boards for a census of all CNS staff. (A full list of specialty and subspecialty combinations is available in the Variable guide.) An initial census was carried out in 2023 and the results were scrutinised by the steering group and compared against the existing data in HR systems. The census was repeated in 2024 with further refinements to nomenclature. The results were used to request changes to the form and content of CNS data recorded in the national eESS HR system. These changes would ultimately support more routine reporting on CNS staff using administrative data.

NHS Boards then had to implement these changes for their current staff. Three NHS Boards are still working on updating their staffs records within eESS, the NHS HR system. These boards are not included in this publication.

These are:

  • NHS Dumfries & Galloway
  • NHS Western Isles
  • NHS National Services Scotland (now PSD Scotland)

Amongst the NHS Boards included in this publication, there were 108 (3.6%) CNS’s for whom the Specialty is not known, or did not match an agreed specialty. Additionally there are 213 (7.3%) were the sub-specialty is not known. We will continue to work with NHS Boards to reduce this.

Users of this information include:

  • The Clinical Nurse Specialist Leads within NHS Boards
  • Scottish Government
  • Royal College of Nursing
  • The public, who submit Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

Who will be developing these statistics?

The statistics will be developed by the Data Group in NHS Education for Scotland (NES). The Data Group has been publishing official statistics since 2019.

We will continue to work with both data suppliers to increase the accuracy of the data recorded in eESS and seek to work with known users of the statistics such as Scottish Government and the Clinical Nurse Specialist leads within NHS Board to ensure that the data we produce is of Value.

We will communicate the appropriate levels of assurance within the OSR’s Quality Assurance of Administrative Data (QAAD) framework.

We will also identify and work with likely interested parties such as the Royal College of Nursing.

We will seek the views of all users through our website.

When will the new statistics be available?

We plan to publish these statistics again in December 2026, with a census date of 30 September 2026. We will release an update on whether this will continue to be Official Statistics in Development or Official Statistics in September/ October 2026 following the data quality improvement work and feedback on the current process and outputs.

When these are published as Official Statistics they will be included in a tab within the Official Statistics Dashboard.

How to get in touch

If you would like to be involved in the development of these statistics, you can contact the NES Data Group at Datagroup@nes.scot.nhs.uk