Adult Support and Protection (ASP) National Minimum Dataset, 2024-25

Introduction

About this publication

The data presented in this publication relates to Adult Support and Protection (ASP) activity in Scotland during the financial year 2024-25 (from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025). The data comes from the ASP National Minimum Dataset (NMDS), which is maintained by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (Iriss), on behalf of the Scottish Government. 

All 32 Scottish local authorities submit data to the Scottish Government for the ASP NMDS each financial quarter.

The ASP data presented in this report supports a wide range of stakeholders - including policy makers, Ministers, and the general public - to understand how  adult support and protection arrangements are working and to identify where further improvements in policy and practice may be required.

Most of the data in this publication is not comparable with the data from the publication Adult Support and Protection Scotland: April 2019 to March 2022, released in May 2023. This is due to a significant change to the data collection and the shift from a national annual ASP survey to the newly developed NMDS, including the introduction of new definitions for many of the ASP indicators. The one exception is for Large Scale Investigations (LSIs), where the definition has remained consistent and therefore the data are comparable. Please see the chapter on LSIs for more information.

The Scottish Government worked collaboratively with Iriss on this publication. Scottish Government statisticians have helped to ensure this publication has been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. For more information on the roles of the two organisations, please see the data and methodology chapter of the accompanying technical report.

An Official Statistics in Development Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Iriss and the Scottish Government will continue to work with local practitioners and national agencies throughout financial year 2025-26 to further strengthen and implement the ASP national minimum data set. This will include supporting them to consistently gather and report on the indicators. For more information, please see the chapter on Future Plans.

We also welcome feedback from other users of the data in this publication. Please contact us with any feedback you have, using the details supplied in the Enquiries section of the Tell us what you think chapter. 

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.

About Adult Support and Protection (ASP)

The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 (the ASP Act) took effect in 2008. It gives greater protection to adults at risk of harm or neglect. It defines 'adults at risk' as individuals, aged 16 years or over, who meet the ‘three-point criteria’ of being:

• unable to safeguard themselves, their property, rights or other interests;
• at risk of harm; and
• because they are affected by disability, mental disorder, illness or physical or mental infirmity, are more vulnerable to being harmed than others who are not so affected.

The presence of a particular condition does not automatically mean an adult is an "adult at risk". Someone could, for example, have a disability but be able to safeguard themselves, their property, etc. It is important to stress that all three elements of this definition must be met. It is the whole of an adult's particular circumstances that can combine to make then more susceptible to harm than others.

In general terms, behaviours that constitute ‘harm’ to a person can be physical, sexual, psychological, financial, or a combination of these. The harm can be accidental or intentional, or as a result of self neglect, self harm, or neglect by a carer.

The ASP Act places a duty on local authorities to make inquiries about a person's wellbeing, property or financial affairs if it knows or believes that the person is an adult at risk, and that it might need to intervene in order to protect the person's wellbeing, property or financial affairs. Certain public bodies (listed in section 5 of the ASP Act), such as Police Scotland and the relevant Health Board, are required to cooperate with local authorities and each other to enable or assist the local authority to decide whether someone is an adult at risk of harm, and whether action needs to be taken to protect the adult from harm.

Each local authority must also establish an Adult Protection Committee, which has certain statutory functions as per section 42 of the ASP Act relating to the leadership, oversight and governance for ASP. Adult Protection Committees’ membership is inclusive of multi-agency representatives, including from the local authority, Police Scotland, and NHS.

In this publication (and the accompanying technical report) we also make reference to ASP partnerships. For the purposes of this report, our definition of what constitutes an ASP partnership is a group of partner organisations who work together – operationally and strategically - to:

• receive all intimations of adult protect concerns;
• determine which concerns require investigation and investigate them;
• determine actions required to make sure that adults at risk of harm are safe, protected, supported, involved, and consulted;
• and are responsible and accountable for the implementation of these actions.

The core partners are the local authority, Police Scotland, the NHS Board and relevant contractors, such as GPs. Other key partners include the Adult Protection Committee, third sector organisations, and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

This definition an ASP partnership is aligned with the definition of an adult protection partnership as used by the Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) for the purpose of joint inspections.

About the ASP National Minimum Dataset

The aim of the ASP National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) is to generate a shared understanding of ASP activity, through the collection of robust, meaningful and comparable data on a number of key data points (‘indicators’). Analysis of the data will inform planning and support the improvement of ASP services, locally and nationally. It will also improve our ability – locally and nationally - to identify themes, drive improvement and change, and align data with other relevant policy areas.

The ASP NMDS for 2024-25 included 19 data items (‘indicators’) that related to ASP activity in Scotland in the financial year 2024-25. Each of the 32 local authorities submitted a quarterly return of the indicators to the Scottish Government.

The ASP NMDS replaces a previous national annual data return on ASP activity that was collected by the Scottish Government until the end of financial year 2022-23. An alternative to the annual returns was deemed desirable, due to inconsistency between local authorities in how the definitions of indicators included in it were interpreted or applied. Improving data and information on ASP, in particular strengthening the focus on outcomes, was identified as a key strand of the ASP improvement programme (2019–22), informed by the 2018 thematic inspection by the Care Inspectorate & scrutiny partners.

In 2020, Iriss and five learning partners started work on developing the ASP NMDS. The learning partners are five local authorities from across Scotland who volunteered to help develop, review, test and support roll out of the ASP NMDS. The development of the NMDS, including a glossary to promote consistency in understanding indicator definitions, coincided with an update to the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007: Code of Practice (July 2022), which introduced updated ASP terminology. The data collected on the indicators in the NMDS (and reported on in this publication) follows this updated terminology.

Local authorities started to report quarterly data for the ASP NMDS under ‘phase 1’ in April 2023. Local authorities needed to update their ASP reporting practices and recording systems to enable data collection and reporting for the NMDS. These changes could not always happen in time for all local authorities to report data consistently during phase 1 (financial year 2023-24). In recognition of this, the Scottish Government chose not to publish data from 2023-24 (with the exception of Large Scale Investigation figures, which are published for the first time in this publication).

The Scottish Government and Iriss assessed the data for 2024-25 as sufficiently robust and consistent to enable publication for most data items at a national (Scottish) level. Data on some of the indicators collected in 2024-25 has not been published, to give local authorities time to develop their systems to ensure the data for these indicators are robust and consistent. There is more information in the Data and Methodology chapter of the accompanying technical report.

Thanks go to the learning partners, all those in ASP partnerships who had to adapt to and supply data for the NMDS, and also to systems suppliers who were often tasked with making adaptations.

Further notes on the data in this publication

The majority of the data in this publication is not comparable with the previous publication on ASP data, released in May 2023. This is due to a significant change to the data collection and a shift from the previous national annual ASP data return to the newly developed ASP NMDS. This includes the introduction of revised definitions for many of the ASP indicators, in line with the updated guidance released in the revised Code of Practice in July 2022. The exception is Large Scale Investigations (LSIs). Please see the chapter on LSIs for more information.

The data in this publication is presented at national level only. Some differences exist in how local authorities implement the ASP Act and the associated ASP Code of Practice, and this variation in ASP practice impacts the comparability across local authorities of the data reported for some indicators. During 2024-25 there was also some continued variation in recording practices and data reporting across local authorities. For these reasons, the data for 2024-25 was considered not sufficiently robust to enable meaningful comparisons to be drawn between local authorities.

For the same reasons, data on indicators presented in this publication is referred to as ‘reported’ numbers.

This statistical publication does not present data on all the data items (indicators) returned for the 2024-25 ASP NMDS. Data on certain indicators has not been presented where the Scottish Government and Iriss consider local variation in ASP practice, or in data recording and reporting practice, to be too high to report meaningfully at a national level, or where we believe more work needs to be done to understand these local variations. For more information, please see the chapter on Future Plans (in this publication) the data and methodology chapter in the accompanying technical report.

Data quality considerations relevant to each indicator are noted at the start of each chapter or sub-chapter, with more details provided in the data and methodology chapter of the accompanying technical report.

The statistics in this publication cover the total reported numbers for ASP activity conducted during financial year 2024-25 (i.e. 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025). A breakdown by the four financial quarters is available in the accompanying data tables.

For this publication, calculated percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole percent. Where percentages calculated were less than 1% (but greater than zero) we have reported this as <1%.

We have applied statistical disclosure control to the data in this publication and the accompanying data tables. This has been done to reduce the risk of identifying individual people. In this publication, where a figure relates to a group of fewer than five people, we have displayed the number as <5.

Data presented as a number per 100,000 people aged 16+ uses the mid-year 2024 population estimates published by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) on 14 August 2025.

Sources of support

If you, or someone you know, is at risk of harm we would advise you to contact your local authority by email or phone to share your concerns. You can do so anonymously if you wish. The matter will be dealt with sensitively and confidentially, and support given if needed. You will be able to find contact details for your local authority on the ASP Further Information page of the Care Information Scotland website.