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The Scottish Government continues to work closely with NHS 24 as it trials and implements new approaches to service delivery.

NHS 24 is also collaborating with key partners, including the Scottish Ambulance Service, to explore improved models of joint working. These efforts aim to enhance efficiency and ensure the 111 service remains responsive, effective, and aligned with the needs of patients across Scotland.

The role of the Scottish Government is to provide policies, frameworks and resources to NHS Boards in order that they can deliver services that meet the needs of their local population. NHS Boards are responsible for deciding the distribution of funding that they receive from the Scottish Government across the services they manage, including the funding of cataract activity.

This year, as part of our additional £110 million investment to help NHS Boards tackle the longest waits for procedures and operations, more than £12 million has been ring-fenced for ophthalmology.

The Scottish Government have not received reports of any extended delays for patients contacting NHS 24. We monitor NHS 24’s performance closely and remain satisfied that it continues to meet its statutory and clinical obligations.

NHS 24 has taken significant steps to improve performance, including increasing staffing levels to 1,556.9 WTE (2,199 headcount) as of March 2025 – an increase of 48.3% over the past decade. The service has also revised its key performance indicators to better capture unmet demand and identify risks where callers may have made multiple unsuccessful attempts to access 111.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting NHS 24’s efforts to improve service delivery and ensure that the 111 service continues to meet the needs of the public.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Flood risk management implementation reports for the years 2010 to 2012 are available on the Scottish Government’s archive website. These reports are joint publications detailing progress in implementing both the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009.

Relevant links are provided below.

Report for year 2010:

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Implementation of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009: Annual Report to the Scottish Parliament - 2010

Report for year 2011:

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Annual Report to the Scottish Parliament, 2011 - Implementation of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009

Combined report for years 2012 and 2013:

[ARCHIVED CONTENT]

The information requested is not collected by the Scottish Government.

Specific data on staffing expenditure from Pupil Equity Funding in schools, broken down by local authority, is not held centrally.

Since Pupil Equity Funding’s introduction in 2017-18, over £1billion has been allocated to Scotland’s schools, empowering headteachers to take the best approaches that suit the needs of their pupils, including using it to support significant numbers of additional staff, to help close the poverty-related attainment gap. Scottish Attainment Challenge funding, which includes annual Pupil Equity Funding of £130 million to 97% of schools, supports up to 3,000 additional staff, including up to 700 FTE teachers.

Across the country we continue to trust and empower Scotland's headteachers to use this extra funding to support their pupils - whether through extra support staff, family link workers or through support for mental health, for example. The recently published PEF Report highlights some of the ways Headteachers are investing their funding to improve outcomes for children impacted by poverty:- pupil_equity_funding_report_2025_.pdf

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) uses the national waiting times data mart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case under the Treatment Time Guarantee. This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. In addition, for patients who have completed their wait the procedures that was planned may not always reflect the procedure actually performed after they were admitted for treatment. The latter is not captured through the national data mart. Consequently, PHS is not currently able to report accurately on waiting times to this level of detail.

More detailed information on the procedures that is planned or undertaken for a patient will be held locally by NHS boards.

The Scottish Government commissioned Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is working with NHS Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.

In January 2022, Scottish Government commissioned CfSD to establish the Scottish National Cataract Short Life Working Group. This multi-professional group developed a 'Blueprint for Success' to deliver higher volume cataract surgery in operating theatres across Scotland; the aim being to deliver a minimum of 8 procedures per core 4-hour session or a minimum of one procedure every 30 minutes. The adoption of these minimum standards to deliver higher volume activity will reduce variation and waiting times for planned care across NHS Scotland.

The Blueprint for Success can be accessed here: https://www.nhscfsd.co.uk/media/5sofmknr/cataract-surgery-blueprint-2022.pdf

Furthermore, our additional investment of £110 million in 2025-26 has been targeted to specialty areas and NHS Boards where it can have the greatest impact against the longest waits, including for ophthalmology.

Finally, Our National Treatment Centres (NTC) programme provides additional protected elective capacity and infrastructure for ophthalmic activity. NTC capacity is a national resource and allocations are based on the latest Waiting Times management information available to Scottish Government at the time of decision. This approach ensures the NTCs are targeting the longest waiting patients that meet the clinical criteria for NTCs and allocations of activity have been determined on this basis.

The Scottish Government is responsible for setting the strategic policy direction for NHS Scotland and its workforce. Operational matters, including the staffing of individual services, are the responsibility of each NHS Scotland Health Board.

At a local level, the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 places duties on Health Boards to ensure that at all times suitably qualified and competent individuals are working in such numbers as are appropriate for the health, wellbeing and safety of patients, the provision of high-quality care and the wellbeing of staff.

The Scottish Government works with a stakeholder group (which includes NHS Education for Scotland, the British Medical Association, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and various Health Board representatives including regional workforce planners) to undertake annual reviews of the number of specialty training places (for resident doctors) needed across all specialties in order to meet anticipated future service demand and consultant need.

Workforce statistics, including statistics on certain roles within ophthalmology services across NHS Scotland, can be found at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence.