Scotland Act 2016 implementation: tenth annual report

8. Employability

The Scotland Act 2016 gave Scottish Ministers the powers to deliver employability support that helps disabled people or those at risk of long-term unemployment to seek, obtain, and retain employment, where the assistance is for at least a year.

Costs

91. The administration/operation costs listed above relate only to the share of employability budgets focused on the delivery of Scotland Act powers. In 2025-26, the work that the Scottish Government undertook on Employability Programmes was funded from various budget lines within the former Deputy First Minister, Economy and Gaelic Portfolio.

2025-26 Developments

92. The Scottish Government continues to take forward activity to deliver on the priorities and actions contained in our Employability Strategic Plan (published on 13 September 2024). This has included working collaboratively with partners across the employability sector in Scotland to develop and publish strengthened guidance to support the coherence of local service delivery across the country, culminating in the publication of a refreshed Local Employability Partnership Framework^[17] and Good Practice Guidance for Commissioning Employability Services in Scotland^[18] in November 2025. We published our first annual report on the delivery of our Strategic Plan^[19] in December 2025, setting out key achievements and next steps building on progress and focusing on medium and long term actions.

93. Furthermore, in line with our Programme for Government commitments, Specialist Employability Support (SES) for disabled people and people with long term health conditions was implemented in July 2025, and is now available across all 32 local authorities. This ensures every Local Employability Partnership has enhanced “place and train” provision in place, with the aim of ensuring that more disabled people and those with long-term health conditions can access and sustain secure, fair work. The implementation of SES has been accompanied by updated Service Standards^[20] for devolved employability provision, with data on SES delivery published for the first time in February 2026.

94. The Scottish Government has continued to regularly publish official statistics releases on Fair Start Scotland service performance, alongside independent evaluation reports. The latest statistics release on Fair Start Scotland^[21], covering the period from launch (April 2018) to end September 2024 shows that there were 70,513 starts and 26,565 job starts. Similarly, the latest statistics release on No One Left Behind^[22], covering the period April 2019 to September 2024 shows that there were 73,470 people who started receiving support with 22,782 (31%) people having entered employment, while a further 10,519 (14%) entered further or higher education or training.

Future plans

95. Reaching those who are economically inactive remains a priority and work is underway to increase reach and awareness of our services including with Social Security Scotland, Justice, Childcare, Carers as well as supporting the review of the skills landscape in Scotland.

96. The Employability Strategic Plan sets out a commitment to refresh the Shared Measurement Framework^[23] to improve ease of use and ensure a clearer focus on the wider impact of our support. Further, we are committed to improve reporting on progress and the wider support provided to individuals on their journey towards positive outcomes, particularly for those further from the labour market. We are committed to continuous improvement, and to support this, we are developing a programme of evaluation which will run over several years to add to our evidence base of what is working, and where further improvements may be required across devolved employability services. This will build on previous evaluations of Fair Start Scotland^[24], and on the implementation evaluation conducted for No One Left Behind in 2022^[25].