Maternity Care Survey 2025: privacy notice

This is a summary of our full privacy notice. This document summarises how your personal data is collected, used, and protected as part of the Maternity Care Survey 2025. 

About the survey 

The survey asks about your most recent experience of maternity care. Participation is entirely voluntary, and you can skip any questions you prefer not to answer. If you need help completing the survey, you can ask someone you trust or call our free helpline: 0800 783 1775.

Who is running the survey 

• the Scottish Government runs the survey
• Public Health Scotland (PHS) produces the names and addresses of women invited to take part in the survey from information they have on births
• IQVIA is a contractor appointed to administer the survey for the Scottish Government. IQVIA manages the printing, posting, and collection of the survey questionnaires.

Only PHS and IQVIA will have your contact details. None of the staff involved in your care will know whether or not you have filled in the survey.

Why this survey is needed

The survey results will help us to better understand women’s experience of maternity services in Scotland. It covers:

• care during pregnancy (antenatal care)
• labour and birth
• postnatal care in hospital or midwife-led units
• neonatal care
• infant feeding
• postnatal care at home or in the community

Your feedback helps identify what is working well and where improvements are needed.

Who has access to information that identifies you

Only Public Health Scotland and IQVIA have access to your name and address. 

IQVIA uses this information solely to send you the survey pack and will delete it once their work is complete.

Staff at the NHS Central Register and PHS CHI Linkage and Indexing Service process some identifiable data on behalf of the Scottish Government. This is to avoid sending surveys to individuals who have passed away or have lost their baby. They use data from the Community Health Index (CHI), including:

• your CHI number, name, sex, date of birth, address, and postcode
• your baby’s CHI number, sex, date of birth, address, and postcode
• death records

Survey responses are tracked using a unique survey ID. Only authorised analysts at PHS can link this ID to your identity. 

Accessing information about you through data linkage

Your survey responses may be linked to other health data held by PHS to allow for more detailed analysis. This is only done by authorised analysts and only after approval from NHS research, ethics, and governance bodies. The Scottish Government will not have access to identifying information about you. 

Information that will be linked to your survey is as follows:

• demographic information relating to your age and ethnicity, NHS board of treatment at the start and the end of your pregnancy, how deprived the area you live in is; how urban or rural the area you live in is. This information is linked so that the analyses can compare the responses of mothers with different characteristics and to produce information on care experiences for each NHS board and hospital in Scotland
• information about your pregnancy relating to how many weeks pregnant you were at your booking appointment, how many weeks pregnant you were when you gave birth, how many babies you gave birth to, and how many babies you have previously given birth to. This information will be linked so that analyses can look at whether experiences of care differed by different experiences of pregnancy
• information related to your health and the health of your baby* relating to whether you experienced any tearing during labour (if you had a vaginal birth) and your baby’s APGAR score five minutes after they were born (this is the evaluation of your baby’s responsiveness after being born). This information will be linked to understand whether experiences of care are linked to different outcomes for mothers and babies
• information about the treatment you received when you gave birth* relating to whether your labour was induced, any pain relief you received during labour and/or birth, whether you received an episiotomy during birth, the duration of your labour, and how your baby was delivered. This information will be linked to understand whether your experiences of care are linked to the treatment you received during birth

This helps us to understand how different experiences and treatments relate to care outcomes.

*These variables will only be accessed on a secure platform called the National Safe Haven and the Scottish Government’s access to this information will cease on 31 December 2026.

How your survey responses are used

A small number of named people in Scottish Government and IQVIA will have access to your responses. PHS will also have temporarily access to your survey responses to upload them onto a secure platform called the National Safe Haven to allow the Scottish Government to carry out data analysis. 

The Scottish Government will use the survey responses to publish a report in 2026. You will be able to read it on the Maternity Care Survey website.

We will make sure that no one can be identified from the results. We follow strict rules about this. The rules we follow are rules on anonymisation and data confidentiality by the Government Statistical Service.

How your additional comments are used

If you provide comments, IQVIA will remove any details that could identify you or your care providers (e.g. names, health conditions, or test results) before sharing your comments with the Scottish Government. Anonymised comments may be shared with maternity services, charities, or researchers but only with appropriate approvals.

How long your information is stored for

• IQVIA will delete your contact details and destroy paper surveys after scanning
• scanned surveys will be deleted once the Scottish Government has reviewed them
• the Scottish Government will retain survey responses only as long as needed for analysis
• PHS will keep a separate file for linking survey responses to other data, stored securely and used only with approval

Data linkage will be processed in the National Safe Haven, a secure environment. The Scottish Government will no longer have access to this data after 31 December 2026.

Your rights 

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you and we will not charge you for this
• ask us to correct any personal data we hold about you that is wrong or out of date
• ask that we delete the personal data we hold about you
• withdraw consent to us using your personal data in the ways you’ve said we can
• ask that we send all the personal data we hold on you to another company or organisation
• ask us to stop using your personal data until you’re happy it is correct and being used in a way you are comfortable with
• object to the ways we use personal data 
• complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the ways we gather or use personal data. 

To do any of the above, you can email us at: patientexperience@gov.scot 

The Information Commissioner’s Office provides more information on your rights under Data Protection legislation online.

Further information

If you do not wish to be contacted about this survey again, please call the free survey helpline on 0800 783 1775.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about our privacy policy or information we hold about you. You can contact us by emailing us at: patientexperience@gov.scot 

You can also contact the SG Data Protection Officer at this email address: DataProtectionOfficer@gov.scot 

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. If you are unhappy with the way your personal data is being processed, you can report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at Make a complaint | ICO or by calling the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113. The normal operating hours of the helpline are Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm (excluding bank holidays).

More information about the Maternity Care survey is available.