NHS Gender Identity Clinics: Waiting Times for First Outpatient Consultation

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland presents information on access to NHS Gender Identity Clinics (GIC) in Scotland. The data collection was introduced in April 2023 and includes the four adult and one young person gender identity clinics in operation. The focus is on referrals, number of individuals waiting and length of ongoing wait, and number and wait length of patients seen by a specialist for their first appointment. Please see the publication report or contact us at phs.gic@phs.scot for more information on data improvements or to provide feedback on this publication.

Main points

Based on the data provided by clinics:

• The number of referrals to NHS Gender Identity Services in 2025/26 decreased by 7.7% (-118) compared to the previous year (from 1,529 to 1,411). Just over two-fifths of referrals in 2025/26 were received for people aged 18 to 24 years (622, 44.1%), a decrease of 1.6 percentage points compared to 2024/25 (698, 45.7%). Over a fifth of referrals were for those aged 25 to 34 years (324, 22.9%), which is an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to the previous year (339, 22.2%).
• At 31 March 2026 there were 6,435 people waiting for a first outpatient appointment at an NHS GIC. This represents a 5.1% increase (+314) from the 6,121 waiting one year earlier, and a 22% increase (+1,162) from the 5,273 people waiting at 30 June 2023, when this data collection began.
• As well as an increase in the waiting list size, there has also been an increase in length of wait. Those who have been waiting two years or less from initial referral to first appointment accounted for 35.3% of ongoing waits at 31 March 2026, compared to 43.1% at the same time point the previous year and 59.2% at 30 June 2023, when the data collection started. At the same time, ongoing waits over five years are now at 1,146 (17.8% of those waiting), compared to 716 (11.7% of those waiting) a year earlier, and 45 (less than 1% of those waiting) at 30 June 2023, the first data point available.
• In 2025/26, 413 individuals had a first outpatient appointment with an NHS gender identity specialist in Scotland. This is a decrease of two-fifths (-41%, -287) compared to the previous year and is largely due to a reduction in completed first appointments in NHS Lothian (-302, -55.6%, see publication report for details). A decrease was also seen in NHS Highland clinics (reduction of less than 15%). NHS Grampian saw an increase of 22% (+11), with the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde clinic and the Young People service also seeing small increases in the number of completed waits in 2025/26 compared to 2024/25 (increases of less than 15 and less than 10, respectively).

Clustered bar chart showing the number of ongoing waits at each quarter end by the length patients have been waiting at that point. It shows that there are fewer people in the shorter wait lengths (3 years and under), and more people waiting for four years and over in the current quarter compared to earlier quarters.

Close

Length of ongoing wait at each quarter end in NHS Scotland Gender Identity Clinics, quarters ending June 2023 to March 2026

Background

The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government for 2021-2022 gave a commitment to improve access to NHS Gender Identity Services, including an action to ‘Commission Public Health Scotland (PHS) to establish robust national waiting times data collection and reporting for gender identity services.’ This report is based on quarterly data collected and analysed in response to this commission. The label 'Official Statistics in development' is applied to statistics that are undergoing development and testing but are deemed useful to publish to enable users and stakeholders to comment on their development while quality improvement work is ongoing. The limitations that apply to the interpretation of these data are presented in the main report.