Scottish Household Survey 2025 findings: Trust in Public Institutions

Trust in public institutions from 2022-2025

In this section we present the time series data for this question, available since 2022.

Since 2022, trust in all of the institutions has declined overall (Figure 3 and Table 2). Public trust was generally high during the COVID-19 pandemic and it is likely that public trust was still relatively high in 2022. Between 2023 and 2025 we see some stabilisation in levels of trust, with trust increasing slightly in the Justice System and remaining stable for four of the seven institutions (the Police, Scottish Government, Civil Service and Education System).

Figure 3: Trust in all institutions has declined overall since 2022, although levels have stabilised more recently

Percentage of respondents who trust public institutions, 2022–2025, Scotland

Note: The y-axis starts at 40% in order to show variation more clearly.

While the fall in levels of trust appears to have stabilised since 2023, the proportion of respondents expressing distrust increased for all institutions between 2022-2025, with steeper increases since 2023 (Figure 4 and Table 2).

The proportion of respondents providing a neutral ‘don’t know’ response decreased for six of the seven institutions between 2023 and 2025 (Table 2), suggesting that public opinion may be moving towards more defined positions of either trust or distrust and away from more neutral positions.

Figure 4: Distrust has increased for all institutions despite trust levels stabilising since 2023

Percentage of respondents who distrust public institutions, 2022–2025, Scotland

Note: The y-axis starts at 10% in order to show variation more clearly.

Table 2: Trust in institutions has declined overall since 2022, with some stabilisation since 2023. Distrust has increased and views have become less neutral

Percentage of respondents who trust and distrust public institutions, 2022–2025, Scotland