Section 6 – Further information on Adult Support and Protection, and the ASP NMDS

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.

A key change introduced through the Care Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 is new Section 5A of the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007, which provides a clearer statutory basis for information sharing between local authorities and relevant independent health care providers, where an adult is known or suspected to be at risk of harm. This is particularly relevant for GPs, who play a critical role in identifying and responding to safeguarding concerns. We are currently updating the existing Adult Support and Protection Guidance for General Practice to reflect the legislative changes, clarify expectations around information sharing, and support effective multi-agency working to protect adults at risk.

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.

Section 46 of the ASP Act requires the Convenors of Adult Protection Committees to produce a biennial report analysing, reviewing, and commenting on APC functions and activities in the preceding two years. The biennial report includes use of data collected via the ASP NMDS (or the previous annual reporting) from the previous two reporting periods - alongside other forms of evidence - to demonstrate that statutory responsibilities are being met, provides assurance about adult protection activity and performance, and supports learning and improvement by identifying strengths, challenges and future priorities.

To further support the use of data to inform improvement, Iriss are working with ASP partnerships to explore how existing evidence - including the ASP NMDS - can be used as part of undertaking robust self-evaluation to inform local and national improvement.

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. More frequent quarterly reporting to monitor trends was also seen as beneficial. 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 local authority learning partners (‘ASP NMDS 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.

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 statistics from 2023-24. The exception to this is statistics on Large Scale Investigations (LSIs), which were published for the first time in the 2024-25 ASP NMDS publication and are also reported in this publication.

The Scottish Government and Iriss assessed the data for the 2024-25 ASP NMDS as sufficiently robust and consistent to enable publication of statistics for most indicators at a national (Scottish) level. Those statistics were published on 9 September 2025.

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

Improvements to the ASP NMDS for 2025-26

This is the second year of publishing statistics on activity reported through the ASP NMDS.

The Scottish Government, Iriss and the ASP NMDS learning partners worked together throughout 2025-26 to support local authorities to improve the consistency of their recording and reporting of data through the ASP NMDS.

For a full list of the indicators included in the ASP NMDS in 2025-26, and whether statistics from them is published in this report, please see Annex 1 of the accompanying technical report.

The ASP NMDS continues to be developed based on feedback received from local authorities, and in discussion with Iriss, the ASP NMDS learning partners and other ASP stakeholders. Between 2024-25 and 2025-26 the following changes were made to the ASP NMDS:

Age bands

Following feedback from some local authorities, the age bands used for the age and gender indicator in the ASP NMDS were changed for 2025-26. This brings them into alignment with similar health and social care data collections.

Referrals

DWP / Social Security Scotland was added as a source of ASP referrals (indicator 1).

Adult Support and Protection Plans

Iriss provided additional clarification and guidance on counting ‘total ASPPs’ (indicator 8a; statistic not published).

Planned future developments to the ASP NMDS

Iriss, the ASP NMDS learning partners and the Scottish Government will continue to work with Adult Protection Committees, local authorities and other Adult Support and Protection (ASP) stakeholders to further strengthen the ASP NMDS. This will include supporting ASP partnerships to consistently gather and report on the existing indicators, and working with them to improve the NMDS returns template (and reporting processes to Scottish Government) for financial year 2026-27.

The Scottish Government intends to publish data from the ASP NMDS for financial year 2026-27, and for each of the following financial years.

Publishing statistics on remaining indicators

Statistics on certain indicators in 2025-26 have not been presented where the Scottish Government and Iriss consider that:

• local variation in ASP practice, or in data recording and reporting, are too high to report meaningfully at a national level
• or where we believe more work needs to be done to understand these local variations
• or where a substantial number of local authorities were unable to provide data.

For a full list of which indicators were or were not reported on for 2025-26, please see Annex 1 in the accompanying technical report.

We intend to include statistics from the remaining ASP NMDS indicators once we are confident the underlying data is of sufficient quality, based on the data returns and conversations with relevant local authorities.

Publishing at local authority level

As noted in the Introduction, some differences exist in how local authorities implement the ASP Act and the associated ASP Code of Practice. This variation in ASP practice impacts the comparability of the data reported for some indicators in the ASP NMDS. There can also be differences between local authorities in their ability to record and report on some indicators.

The National ASP Implementation Group sub-group on ‘Inquiries, Investigations and the Role of the Council Officer,’ in collaboration with the Scottish Government and the National ASP Coordinator, is working to identify and share best practice and robust quality assurance approaches with respect to a number of ASP processes at the initial referral, screening and inquiry stage. There will also be a new requirement for 2027-27 for Adult Protection Committees to complete an ‘Assumptions Charter’ to make local practices explicit and to support national interpretation and analysis of 2026-27 NMDS data. This work will positively influence subsequent ASP NMDS collections and publications through improving robustness and understanding comparability.

We will work with key ASP stakeholders to decide when the data for each indicator is consistent and robust enough to allow for meaningful comparison between local authorities. We will publish statistics for each indicator at local authority level as that point is reached.

Supporting local authorities to maximise their use of data from the ASP NMDS

Analysis of the ASP NMDS data can inform planning and support the improvement of ASP services, by improving the ability – locally and nationally - to identify themes, and to drive improvement and change. 

Iriss will continue to hold regular feedback sessions for relevant local authority staff through 2026-27 to discuss trends seen in the data at local or national level, and to raise any issues or suggestions for improving the ASP NMDS collection.

Through 2026-27, Iriss and the ASP NMDS learning partners will also be developing additional tools for local authorities to use, to support analysis, interpretation and use of the ASP NMDS and other local data, as deemed relevant to their local area. This includes a reporting template which can be used to support presentation of local-level data from the ASP NMDS and other sources to relevant local ASP committees and practitioners, and a suite of scrutiny questions for consideration and use.

The ASP NMDS learning partners will continue to support any issues around quality assurance going forward. The new Assumptions Charter for 2026-27 may also be useful in helping local partnerships to identify whether their practices or reporting is different to other areas, and uncover learning opportunities from this.

Planned improvements for the 2026-27 collection

The following specific improvement actions are also being taken in relation to the data collected through the ASP NMDS in financial year 2026-27.

Ethnicity

The category ‘not disclosed’ will be added for 2026-27. This brings the categories in the ASP NMDS into alignment with those used in reporting by NHS Scotland organisations to Public Health Scotland. It will also give local authorities the option to accurately record and report non-disclosure of ethnicity, instead of reporting such instances as ‘not known’. It is hoped this will encourage the collection of ethnicity data within the ASP NMDS, which is intended to assist the monitoring of equality of access to Adult Support and Protection services. Through 2026-27 the Scottish Government and Iriss will also explore ways to better support ASP practitioners in local authorities to collect and record ethnicity data.

Primary harm type

Hoarding will be added as a category of primary harm type for 2026-27. This follows discussions between Iriss, the ASP learning partners and Scottish Government policy officials to make this visible in data collection and drive improvement in this emergent area. The primary harm type category ‘self-neglect’ will be amended to clarify exclusion of hoarding behaviour.

Hoarding Disorder (HD) is mental health condition characterised by excessive acquisition and difficulty discarding due to a perceived need to save items regardless of use or value, with distress and impairment caused by living spaces so severely cluttered that they cannot be used for important daily living functions, such as sleeping, food preparation and washing or bathing. Poor self-care is sometimes associated with HD, but more often with Diogenes syndrome aka self-neglect than HD.

Case conference attendees

Additional guidance will be provided to ASP partnerships to clarify what information they are being asked to collect under indicator 5 (adults at risk invited to attend a case conference) and indicator 6 (independent advocates invited to attend a case conference). Data from these indicators has not been reported in this publication or last year’s publication, due to concerns from some local authorities about the robustness of their data.

Other sources of data on ASP

'Adult Support and Protection – Everyone’s Business' was published by Iriss in May 2023 to be available in tandem with the previously published Adult Support and Protection Scotland: April 2019 to March 2022. ‘Everyone’s Business’ aims to raise awareness of Adult Support and Protection and its important role and contribution in keeping ‘adults at risk’ safe. Please note that the statistics in that report are not comparable to those in this publication (with the exception of the data on LSIs), because they were based on the previous national annual ASP survey, which made use of different definitions.

The legislative frameworks for safeguarding adults are different in other parts of the UK e.g., Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and the Care Act 2014 (England). For this reason, it is not possible to make robust and accurate comparisons between the Scottish statistics presented in this publication and data or statistics from England and Wales.

Statistics on child protection in Scotland, which includes some data on young people aged 16 or 17, is available from the Scottish Government’s Child Protection statistics 2024-25, published on 31 March 2026.