Introduction

This statistics release presents the latest client and expenditure numbers for Free Personal and Nursing Care (FPNC) in 2024-25 (i.e. the period from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025).

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are accredited official statistics. The Office for Statistics Regulation has independently reviewed and accredited these statistics as complying with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

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's statistics and research webpages.

Free Personal and Nursing Care (FPNC)

Free Personal Care (FPC) was introduced in Scotland for those aged 65 and over on 1 July 2002, through the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002. The Scottish Government further legislated, through Frank’s Law, to ensure that from April 2019 adults of any age, no matter their condition, capital or income, who are assessed by their local authority as needing this service, are entitled to receive this without charge. Free Nursing Care (FNC) is similar and has been available to all who are assessed as requiring nursing care services, regardless of age, without charge. 

FPNC includes Free Personal Care (FPC) and Free Nursing Care (FNC).

• Personal care is help with tasks of a personal nature, such as eating, bathing and toileting. Free Personal Care (FPC) has been available in Scotland to adults aged 65 and over who require it since 2002, and was extended to all adults in April 2019. It is provided both to people in care homes, and people receiving Care at Home. The data in this publication covers both groups of people.
• Nursing care is a form of personal care, but relates to care of a medical nature. For example, giving injections or managing pressure sores. Data in this publication relate only to Free Nursing Care (FNC) provided to people in care homes. People requiring nursing care at home have this service provided through the NHS, and are therefore not included in this data.

To monitor the uptake of the FPNC policy, the Scottish Government collects information on the numbers of people resident in care homes with local authority support or receiving Care at Home, how many people receive FPNC payments, and the amount (cost and time) of personal care provided at home. This information is currently collected in a Quarterly Monitoring Return provided by the 32 Scottish local authorities, and published annually in this publication.

The data in this publication reports separately on FPNC for people aged 65 and over, and FPNC for people aged 18 to 64.

Please note that all the statistics presented in this report refer to people whose care involves support from a Scottish local authority.

More information about eligibility for FPNC and the care covered by them, along with other terminology used in this report, is available in the definitions and eligibility section of the methodology and background information document for this publication.

Information contained in this report

This release presents statistics calculated by the Scottish Government, using data supplied by the 32 Scottish local authorities, to give a picture of:

1. the number of people aged 18 and over resident in care homes with local authority support, and how many of them received Free Personal Care (FPC) and/or Free Nursing Care (FNC) payments
2. the estimated amount that local authorities spend on FPNC payments to care home residents
3. the number of Care at Home clients supported, and how many of them receive personal care
4. the estimated weekly hours of personal care provided to those Care at Home clients
5. expenditure by local authorities on providing free personal care to their Care at Home clients.

The chapters of this report follow these five main themes.

In common with last year’s publication, the same variables are presented for clients aged 18 to 64, and 65 and over. Each of the five sections presents data on these two age groups in turn.

The separation into these two age groups is in part due to the different care needs of each group, and additionally because in April 2019 Free Personal Care was made available to those aged 18 to 64, under Frank’s Law. For more information, please see the data sources section of the accompanying methodology and background information document.

Understanding the statistics in this report

All information in this publication is presented for the year 1 April to 31 March. The 2024-25 data was collected at quarterly resolution. The quarters refer to the final day of each quarter (for the total number of long-stay residents supported in care homes), or the final week (for all other variables). The quarters are:

• Q1: April to June
• Q2: July to September
• Q3: October to December
• Q4: January to March

In most cases, only a single annual value is reported for each variable in this publication. The method used to obtain this single value differs depending on the variable:

• For data on numbers of people or numbers of hours, the Quarter 4 (Q4) value is taken as representative of the entire year.
• For expenditure data (including estimated expenditure data), the value for the last week of each quarter is taken to be representative of the average weekly expenditure for the whole of that quarter. All four quarters’ values are scaled up to give estimated quarterly expenditures. These four quarterly values are then added together to give an estimated annual expenditure.

There is more information on how the data for this publication was collected – and how expenditure values were estimated - in the accompanying methodology and background information document.

Data for all four quarters – as well as the annual totals - are available for each variable in the accompanying tables, broken down by local authority.

Where possible, information is reported for a rolling ten-year period, which in the case of this release is from 2015-16 to 2024-25. However, we have only started to collect some data more recently. For example, with the introduction of Frank’s Law in April 2019, we began to collect separate information on social care clients aged 18 to 64. There have also been other changes over time. For more information see the sub-section on interpreting changes over time, in the data quality section. There is also more information in the accompanying methodology and background information document.

Numbers presented within this report and in the accompanying tables have been rounded, to prevent disclosing information about individual people:

• numbers of people have been rounded to the nearest 10
• numbers of hours of care provided have been rounded to the nearest 100
• expenditure estimates have been rounded to the nearest £1,000

For the same reason, some values for residents aged 18 to 64 are reported at Scotland-level only in the accompanying tables.

Calculations of totals and of percentages have been made using original, unrounded numbers. This means that the totals and percentages presented in this publication text and the accompanying tables may be slightly different from what would be calculated using the rounded numbers presented.

The Scotland-level totals presented in this report have been calculated by adding together the data for each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. Where values for a data item were supplied by all 32 local authorities, the Scotland total is referred to in this publication as ‘reported’. Where a value for one or more local authorities was missing from a data item, and we estimated the missing value(s), the Scotland-level total is referred to as ‘estimated’. Estimates of annual expenditure are also always referred to as ‘estimated’; please see the methodology and background information document for more information. Where a value for one or more local authorities was missing and we were not able to estimate it, the total is referred to as ‘across all the local authorities who submitted data’.

For the 2024-25 publication, we have made a change to how we estimate some missing values. This includes revising some historic estimates for a small number of local authorities. This means that some figures for 2023-24 and earlier years presented in this publication may be different to what we have reported in previous publications. There is more information on how we have calculated estimated values in the accompanying methodology and background information document. This includes information on the change we have made this year to our estimation method.

When submitting data for 2024-25, local authorities were also able to submit revised values for historic years. In 2024-25, three local authorities submitted revised values for historic years. This means that some figures for 2023-24 - and earlier years - presented in this publication may be different to what we have reported in previous publications. There is more information in the Data Quality chapter at the end of this publication, and in the accompanying methodology and background information document.

Local authorities are responsible for delivering services locally, and may not always manage national eligibility consistently. Changes between years (or quarters) in the numbers of people receiving services, including Care at Home and personal care at home, and the number of hours of care provided, may be the result of changes to managing local eligibility criteria, and may not necessarily represent a change in need. In addition, local authorities may make changes to their data recording systems or data reporting practices which can lead to a change in the numbers they report to us for this collection.

More information on data quality is given in the data quality section of this publication. There is also further information in the accompanying methodology and background information document. In particular, Appendix 2: Collected and calculated variables lists the variables collected from local authorities in the Quarterly Monitoring Return, and explains how we used them to calculate the statistics presented in this publication.

How to access data

Two spreadsheets showing the rounded data used to write this publication can be accessed via the supporting documents page of the 2024-25 Free Personal and Nursing Care page, on the Scottish Government website. These present values both at Scotland total, and local authority level. Separate spreadsheets are published for adults aged 18 to 64, and adults aged 65 and over.

Past editions of this publication, dating back to 2010-11, can also be accessed via the Free Personal and Nursing Care collection webpage.

For other data and publications relating to social care produced by the Scottish Government, please see the Health and Social Care Analysis page on our website.