Organisational Duty of Candour: non-statutory guidance - revised March 2025

Executive Summary

Openness and honesty should be central to the actions of those providing care to others, and at the heart of every relationship between those providing, receiving and/or experiencing treatment and care. Trust and effective communication can be difficult to maintain and easy to lose when there has been an unintended or unexpected incident that has resulted in or could result in death or harm.

The organisational duty of candour underpins the Scottish Government’s commitment to openness and learning, which is vital to the provision of safe, effective and person-centred health and social care. This guidance focuses on the implementation of the legal duty of candour procedure for all organisations that provide health services, care services or social work services in Scotland.

This guidance replaces the 2018 organisational duty of candour guidance^[1] issued by the Scottish Government. It has been updated based on reviews of published annual reports, learning identified from the COVID-19 pandemic and other scenarios such as healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and incidents involving multiple people, and extensive engagement and feedback from across the health, care and social work sectors. This guidance does not reflect any change in The Duty of Candour Procedure (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (The 2018 Regulations)^[2].

The updates are focused on the following key areas to provide further clarity and guidance for those activating the duty:

• how COVID-19 / HAIs can impact the duty – this guidance has been updated to align more closely with the guidance in the National Infection Prevention and Control Manual
• clarity on the benefit of the duty, particularly for care and independent healthcare providers
• further guidance and signposting to training available at a national and/or local level
• clarity on the differences between professional and organisational duty of candour
• clarity on who the procedure applies to and when it should be activated – several examples have been included based on learning from real world scenarios
• updated annual report templates which can be used to fulfil statutory reporting requirements
• guidance on recording meetings has been incorporated
• defining ‘could result in’ further to ensure providers are aware of when activating the duty is necessary
• clarity on an apology not being an admission of negligence