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Under the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019, Health Boards / Special Health Boards / NHS National Services Scotland must follow the common staffing method, which only applies to certain types of health care, provided in certain locations by certain employees (see annex A), at least once every financial year. It must then decide if any changes are needed as a result, both to the staffing establishment, for example an increase or decrease, and the way in which it provides health care, for example service redesign.

Health Boards / Special Health Boards / NHS National Services Scotland are required to publish and submit an annual report to Scottish Ministers on how they have carried out their duties in the Act, with the first report due by 30 April 2025. Scottish Ministers must then present these reports to Parliament with an accompanying statement detailing how the information will be used in designing policies for staffing of the health service.

However, results from the common staffing method are only one factor in providing information on workforce and service delivery and the Scottish Government continues to implement policies for workforce and service reform.

Overall nursing and midwifery staffing is at a record high, up by 17.8% since September 2006, by 10,100.4 WTE to 66,883.6 WTE. Since September 2006, qualified nurses and midwives have increased by 16.3%, by 6,698.7 WTE to 47,724.9 WTE. Initiatives on international recruitment provided around £18m in funding to Boards to recruit 1,250 international nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, with well over 1,000 already in post across Scotland so far and many more arriving in the coming weeks.

Controls were introduced by Boards from 1 April 2023 in order to gradually reduce the number of shifts being filled by nurse agency workers and from 1 June 2023 Boards were no longer using off-framework nurse agencies unless in exceptional circumstances. Boards have reported significant progress in reducing reliance on agency nursing staff as a result of these changes. Further controls were introduced from 1 April 2024, and Boards are no longer using agency workers to fill Health Care Support Worker (HCSW) / unregistered shifts.

The Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce (NMT) was announced in February 2023 at the request of staff side organisations, including the Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives to understand the challenges facing nurses and midwives across Scotland. The NMT continues to be a Ministerial priority and will recommend a workplan of actions which will seek to improve workplace culture, practice, flexibility, recruitment and retention, alongside the diversification of education and training pathways to support longer-term workforce sustainability. The NMT is making good progress with the development of its recommended actions and will continue to work until members have agreed a comprehensive action plan. We anticipate the publication of a report later in 2024.

Annex A

Types of health care, locations and employees subject to the common staffing method

Our prevention agenda has seen the implementation of various strategies, addressing the fundamental drivers of inequality; encouraging early intervention and support; and promoting environments that support healthy lifestyles.

This has included tackling some of the root socioeconomic drivers of heath inequalities with the allocation of around £3 billion a year to a range of actions to tackle poverty and mitigate the impacts of the cost-of-living-crisis. We are also delivering Community Link Workers and Welfare Rights Advisors to offer advice on housing, social security and employability issues within GP practices across our rural and deprived communities.

To support and encourage positive health behaviours SG has continued to take forward a range of actions. This includes the implementation and subsequent expansion of Minimum Alcohol Pricing to reduce drinking at harmful levels by setting a floor price for each unit of alcohol. We are tackling the adverse effects of smoking through our Tobacco and Vaping Framework. We continue work to ensure that everyone eats well and has a healthy diet through our Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan, we are currently consulting on a set of proposed regulations to restrict promotions of less healthy food and drink.

The Scottish Government remains committed to our ambition to improve the health of our population and tackle health inequalities. We know that to achieve this we must focus on preventing illness and promoting wellbeing and tackling some of the wider determinants of health. Going forward, we will build on this progress and continue to prioritise prevention as a key component of our wider healthcare strategy.

Further work is being undertaken to consider the range of views from our consultation on potential restrictions to alcohol advertising and promotion in Scotland.

We remain committed to progressing proposals to reduce children and young people’s exposure to alcohol marketing whilst also recognising the importance of balancing any potential impacts on business and industry.

We are continuing to engage with public health stakeholders and business organisations with an interest in alcohol marketing to ensure the Scottish Government strikes the right balance in achieving its public health aims.

The Scottish Government has provided the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) with £38,713 to fund project work in support of this Stroke Improvement Plan commitment. This funding will support a project aiming to assess the feasibility and acceptability of video assisted assessment of patients with hyperacute stroke in Scotland. This will involve an appropriately trained clinician holding a live video call with the patient during the time that the ambulance is travelling to the patient. SAS aim to interview for staff to support the project in late May. The project start date is currently June 2024 and the project work is scheduled to conclude by December 2024.

To date, £12,351,185 of capital investment has been awarded via the Scottish Government’s Islands Programme across 61 projects and 50 islands.

2021-22

The 2021-2022 Islands Programme was delivered through the Islands Infrastructure Fund and was allocated £5 million. The final amount awarded to capital projects was £3,901,192.

2022-23

The 2022-2023 Islands Programme was allocated £4.45 million. The allocation was awarded in full.

2023-24

The 2023-2024 Islands Programme was allocated £4 million. The final amount awarded to capital projects was £3,999,993.

Establishing hydrogen transport infrastructure is critical to achieving the ambitions set out in our Hydrogen Action Plan. The Scottish Government is working with key European partners to assess options and opportunities for the development of transport infrastructure to enable the export of hydrogen from Scotland.

Scottish Government is engaging with National Grid on the Project Union initiative exploring the phased repurposing of the UK’s natural gas National Transmission System (NTS) to create a UK hydrogen backbone carrying 100% hydrogen. Decisions on the future of the Gas Grid are a reserved matter and are expected to be made in 2026 by the UK Government. We continue to routinely engage with UK Government on a range of hydrogen policy matters including Transport and Storage Hydrogen Business Models.

We are also working with industry and the development agencies on the development of a Hydrogen Sector Export Plan (HSEP) that will set out the steps needed to realise Scotland's export potential – including in relation to the development of critical infrastructure to support the transport of hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives. This is expected to be published this year.

Alongside electrification, hydrogen will be a key part of the net zero journey, particularly in transitioning many hard-to-abate sectors such as industry. The Scottish Government is developing a place-based, industry specific Just Transition Plan for the Grangemouth industrial cluster, as we committed to doing in our 2023 Programme for Government. The Plan will outline the strategic long-term future of the industrial cluster and a range of possibilities for operations at Grangemouth in 2045, including low-carbon hydrogen manufacture, carbon capture and storage, as well as wider Just Transition outcomes for the workforce, community and surrounding environment.

Beyond this, we have produced a detailed report on the distillery sector which can be found here .

We are engaging closely with the Cromarty Hydrogen Project (Storegga) 10.6MW and Scottish Power Whitelees Project 7.1MW both of whom are targeting industrial heat as an offtake for their renewable hydrogen and were successful in their applications for support from the UK Government via the first allocation round of the hydrogen production business model.

In addition, the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (SIETF) has match-funded support grants for feasibility and engineering studies which can allow industrial manufacturers to investigate how they could use hydrogen to decarbonise their operations.

We are building the evidence base to help support hydrogen off-take across multiple sectors in Scotland, examining both hydrogen production and demand across Scotland’s geography through a number of key reports, such as ‘Hydrogen demand in Scotland: a mapping of industrial and transport applications’ which can be found here and a detailed report focussing specifically on the distillery sector which can be found here .

The Scottish Government and our Enterprise Agencies support hydrogen developers and businesses across Scotland to grow a pipeline of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production projects in Scotland and secure the accompanying supply chain opportunities. Over fifty hydrogen production projects are at varying stages of development amounting collectively to more than the 5 GW’s of hydrogen production capacity we hope to have operational by 2030.

We are engaging closely with the Cromarty Hydrogen Project (Storegga) 10.6MW and Scottish Power Whitelees Project 7.1MW both of whom are targeting industrial heat as an offtake for their hydrogen and were successful in their applications for hydrogen business model support from UKG in the first round allocation (HAR1). We provided letters of support for a further 10 projects in Scotland that applied for the UKG’S HAR 2 round.

Alongside Scottish Enterprise, we are developing a Scottish Hydrogen Innovation Network (SHINE). SHINE will provide an entry point for Scottish and European companies to access Scottish research and development centres in academic and commercial settings. The resulting innovations will increase the competitiveness of hydrogen technologies and enable collaborative partnerships.

The formal project launch of SHINE will take place at All-Energy on 16 May 2024 with the SHINE website to be launched preceding All-Energy.