National drug and alcohol treatment waiting times
1 January 2025 to 31 March 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on waiting times for people accessing specialist drug and alcohol treatment services between 1 January 2025 and 31 March 2025. 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 200 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 below 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 31 March 2025:

• 10,233 referrals were made to community-based specialist drug and alcohol treatment services: 5,012 (49.0%) were for problematic use of alcohol, 3,845 (37.6%) for problematic use of drugs, and 1,376 (13.4%) for co-dependency (problematic use of both alcohol and drugs).
• 6,863 referrals to community-based services started treatment. Of these, 6,377 (92.9%) involved a wait of three weeks or less. Two NHS Boards did not meet the Standard (Lothian, 89.4%; Highland, 87.5%).
• Nationally, the Standard was met for referrals to community-based services across all substances: drugs (96.1%), co-dependency (93.9%) and alcohol (90.5%).
• 789 referrals were made to prison-based services. Of these, 629 (79.7%) were for people seeking help for problematic use of drugs, 122 (15.5%) for co-dependency and 38 (4.8%) for problematic use of alcohol.
• 316 referrals to prison-based services started treatment. Of these, 283 (89.5%) involved a wait of three weeks or less. Four out of nine NHS Boards with prison-based services did not meet the Standard (Ayrshire & Arran, 85.7%; Lothian, 83.0%; Highland, 70.0%; Tayside, 37.5%).
• Nationally, for the first time since reporting from the Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) began in April 2021, the Standard was not met for referrals to prison-based services (89.5%). Across substance types, the Standard was met for co-dependency (90.6%) and drugs (90.4%) but not for alcohol (78.2%).

As of 31 March 2025:

• 2,071 community-based service referrals had not started treatment. Of these, 303 (14.6%) involved a wait of more than three weeks.
• 34 prison-based service referrals had not started treatment. Of these, 10 (29.4%) 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 31 March 2025. Scotland overall achieved 92.9%. Two NHS Boards did not meet the Standard with Lothian at 89.4% and Highland at 87.5%.

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Percentage of completed community referrals with a wait of three weeks or less, by NHS Board (1 January 2025 to 31 March 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.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 30 September 2025.