Public service reform strategy: impact assessments

Consumer Duty Compliance Statement

The Scottish Ministers have complied with the requirements of the Consumer Scotland Act 2020 (Relevant Public Authorities) Regulations 2024 in deciding on the PSR Strategy. This statement sets out the steps taken to comply with the duty. The following impact assessment has been carried out:

Stage 1 – Planning

1. Is this a decision of a strategic nature? Yes

The PSR Strategy sets out an approach for how government will deliver a system that improves lives, reduces inequality and is fiscally sustainable. That means the public services system will:

• Be efficient and effective with the right-size delivery landscape
• Better join up services and focus on helping people
• Prioritise prevention
• Empower people and communities to shape the services that matter to them

The strategy sets our a framework across foundations and three pillars for how this will be achieved, including workstreams and existing programmes.

Foundations

The strategy also sets out workstreams that form the foundations - or core enabling elements and actions - that must be in place for reform to take place.

Workstreams include:

• Leadership and culture
• Empowering places and communities
• Accountability and incentives
• Ensuring the right delivery landscape

Pillar 1: Preventative Services

Prevention is about intervening early to make long-term change to improve lives – this means stopping the establishment (or escalation) of problems that lead to negative outcomes for people. This pillar is focussed on changing how the system operates to invest in the most impactful preventative approaches. Across both the ‘foundations’ commitments and the workstreams under this pillar we will address the barriers to creating a truly preventative system.

Workstreams under this pillar:

• Understanding and mitigating demand drivers
• Preventative Budgeting

Pillar 2: Joined up Services

Much of the activity to improve services must be delivered within service areas (but across organisations). This means focussing on improving access, speeding up flow through the system and improving the experience for those services on which we all rely. This pillar particularly focusses on changing our model of service delivery, particularly for people with the greatest disadvantage or facing the most complex circumstances, to provide person-centred services.

Workstreams under this pillar:

• Simplification
• Local integration: strengthening Community Planning and realising the potential of the third sector
• Data sharing and data usage
• Digital public services

Pillar 3: Efficient Services

There is a wide range of activity within Scottish Government to drive efficiencies within Government and across the public sector. Together these support the drive to continuously improve and bring down the cost of delivery. However, we want to go further in bringing these individual workstreams together into a comprehensive programme and to focus on system efficiency (rather than individual organisation efficiency). That means initiating new workstreams and working more closely with public bodies as key colleagues and partners in driving efficiency.

Workstreams under this pillar:

• Data collection
• Workforce
• Digital skills and resource
• Shared services
• Scaling Intelligent Automation
• Expansion of National Collaborative procurement
• Commercial value for money
• Scottish Single Estate

For the majority of people the strategy being successfully implemented will mean they can access the services they need, with the confidence that public money is spent wisely and with clarity on how well services are performing.

2. Is the strategic decision likely to have an impact on any/all consumers? Yes

As the strategy comprises proposed workstreams to reform public services and their delivery it will have an impact on users of those services. Users of public services are consumers for the purpose of the consumer duty.

Stage 2 – Evidence Gathering

3. What is the proposal trying to achieve?

As set out above, the strategy presents an approach for how government will deliver a system that improves lives, reduces inequality and is fiscally sustainable. That means the public services system will:

• Be efficient and effective with the right-size delivery landscape
• Better join up services and focus on helping people
• Prioritise prevention
• Empower people and communities to shape the services that matter to them

4. What are the impacts on consumers?

The strategy will impact upon how the public, as consumers, engage with services and how their data is used. Commitments to better align services, including for families at risk of poverty through Whole Family Support, will have implications for how consumers interact with public services and we will continue to assess how this will impact consumers as the policy is further developed. 

The strategy has 18 workstreams across foundations and three pillars. An overview of each section below illustrates how we expect consumers may be impacted and how they have been considered.

Foundations:

A focus on empowering places and communities will improve services for consumers by giving a greater say in how services are delivered and how they are centred around the people using them. We have particularly focussed on the ‘representation’ principle in development of this section in terms of ensuring consumer needs, views and experiences are informing the design and delivery of current and future goods and services.

Ensuring the right delivery landscape will ensure consumers receive services from the appropriate body in a simplified way.

Pillar 1 – Preventative services

Increasing the system focus on prevention will improve services for consumers who are most vulnerable, as the drivers of demand for services are better understood and prevention interventions are easier to fund through more flexible budgeting.

Pillar 2 – Joined-up services

Workstreams focusing on connecting and aligning services, data and digital services will improve consumers’ experiences of services through making them simpler and easier to navigate. Consumers, particularly consumers experiencing disadvantage, will experience more person-centred services and will have to spend less time finding the correct service or missing services available to them. We have considered ‘choice’. The emphasis on person-centred services is about how services should be holistic, ethical, assets-based and relational which is about building trusting relationships and addressing what matters to individuals and their families, rather than focussing on what individual organisations can offer.

Pillar 3 – Efficient services

The focus on efficiency will have less of a direct impact on consumers (in terms of users of services), however, should overall improve experiences of services as workstreams improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the system and ensure public value.

We have considered the ‘access’ principle in informing this decision. This is predominantly focussed on protecting service provision for consumers to ensure consumers can continue to access the services that they require.

5. Is it likely that harm will be experienced by consumers as a result of this proposal?

It is considered unlikely that there will be any increase in harm to consumers as a result of the strategy. Across all elements of the strategy we are focussed on improving outcomes for service users, or consumers. It is therefore unlikely that the overall package within the PSR strategy will result in harm to consumers. Individual policy commitments will be assessed, as appropriate, to consider any issues of harm.

Stage 3 – Assessment and Improvement of Proposal

6. What is the expected impact of the strategic decision on consumers in Scotland?

It is expected that the impact of the strategy will overall be positive for consumers.

7. Has Scottish Government had due regard to the desirability of reducing harm to consumers in Scotland? Yes

Each workstream has been considered and there was no expectation of harm arising from any of them, with many actively aiming to reduce harm to consumers.

8. Is there a need for further engagement with consumers?

Further engagement will be needed as part of standard policy development across each workstream. Each workstream and policy area is responsible for engaging with consumers as appropriate.

Stage 4 – Decision

9. Has Scottish Government met the consumer duty for this decision? Yes

10. If yes to above, explain how?

In the process of carrying out this impact assessment, the cumulative effect of the vision and workstreams included in the strategy has been examined for potential impacts on consumers in Scotland. Regard has accordingly been had to the impact of the strategy on consumers in Scotland, and to the desirability of reducing harm to them. We have therefore put consumer outcomes at the heart of our strategic decision making.

Stage 5 – Publication and Review

Section 23 of the 2020 Act requires public authorities to publish information about the steps which they have taken to meet the duty. The authority must publish the information no later than 12 months after the end of period to which it relates.

This statement will be published on the Scottish Government website (Scotland’s Public Service Reform Strategy – Impact Assessments) on 11th July 2025.

The impact assessment carried out will be subject to review and evaluation within 12 months of publication using the template found at the Consumer Scotland website.