National drug and alcohol treatment waiting times
1 April 2025 to 30 June 2025

About this release

This quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on waiting times for people accessing specialist drug and alcohol treatment services between 1 April 2025 and 30 June 2025. Data are presented by NHS Board of treatment. Trend data for selected indicators are available in the publication dashboard.

In 2011, the Scottish Government set a Standard that 90% of people referred for help with problematic drug or alcohol use will wait no longer than three weeks for specialist treatment that supports their recovery.

Across Scotland, ten out of 193 specialist treatment services were excluded from this release due to incomplete data. Findings reported here refer only to those services who provided complete data. See the data quality document for more information.

Following the customer survey on outputs associated with this publication, production of the PDF report ceased with the March 2025 publication. This and future releases are instead supported by the publication dashboard.

Main points

During the quarter ending 30 June 2025:

• 10,641 referrals were made to community-based specialist drug and alcohol treatment services: 5,123 (48.1%) were for problematic use of alcohol, 3,990 (37.5%) for problematic use of drugs, and 1,528 (14.4%) for co-dependency (problematic use of both alcohol and drugs).
• 7,041 referrals to community-based services started treatment. Of these, 6,637 (94.3%) involved a wait of three weeks or less. Two NHS Boards did not meet the Standard (Lothian, 89.0%; Highland, 83.6%).
• Nationally, the Standard was met for referrals to community-based services across all substances: drugs (96.2%), co-dependency (94.5%) and alcohol (92.8%).
• 718 referrals were made to prison-based services. Of these, 570 (79.4%) were for people seeking help for problematic use of drugs, 107 (14.9%) for co-dependency and 41 (5.7%) for problematic use of alcohol.
• 288 referrals to prison-based services started treatment. Of these, 272 (94.4%) involved a wait of three weeks or less. Three out of nine NHS Boards with prison-based services did not meet the Standard (Highland, 88.8%; Lothian, 88.0%; Tayside, 58.3%).
• Nationally, the Standard was met for referrals to prison-based services (94.4%) across all substances: alcohol (100.0%), co-dependency (98.3%) and drugs (92.7%).

As of 30 June 2025:

• 1,968 community-based service referrals had not started treatment. Of these, 232 (11.7%) involved a wait of more than three weeks.
• 13 prison-based service referrals had not started treatment. Of these, three (23.0%) involved a wait of more than three weeks.

Bar chart illustrating the percentage of community referrals completed within three weeks against the Standard of 90% for each NHS Board in the quarter ending 30 June 2025. Scotland overall achieved 94.3%. Two NHS Boards did not meet the Standard with Lothian at 89.0% and Highland at 83.6%.

Close

Percentage of completed community referrals with a wait of three weeks or less, by NHS Board (1 April to 30 June 2025)

Background

These data were extracted from the Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) and its predecessor the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Waiting Times (DATWT) database. DAISy has been available in all NHS Boards from April 2021 and replaced two previous systems: the DATWT database and the Scottish Drug Misuse Database (SDMD).

DAISy and its predecessors hold data in relation to specialist drug and alcohol treatments and waiting times from services throughout Scotland delivering tier 3 and 4 specialist drug and alcohol interventions, namely structured community, and residential treatment. These treatments are provided by services in 30 Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) across Scotland, who submit data to PHS through a secure web system.

For more information on publication context, terminology, metadata and early access details, see the Background Information document.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 16 December 2025.