Scottish cervical screening programme statistics
Annual update to 31 March 2022
A National Statistics publication for Scotland
- Published
- 30 May 2023
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
Update about our Scottish cervical screening programme statistics
This publication series is still being developed after we identified some data quality issues. Users should be aware that earlier published figures contained some errors. At a national level, these errors had only a small impact and do not change the overall findings or key messages from the statistics.
We informed the Office for Statistics Regulation when the issue was first identified and continue to work with them on the next steps.
On 24 February 2026, we published a new report under Official Statistics in Development. In this report, the data issues were corrected and revised figures were published back to the 2016/17 financial year. Anyone using these statistics should use the updated data available in Annual update to 31 March 2025 report. The full report also explains the future of these statistics in the planned developments section. Data from before 2016/17 can be found in Appendix 3 – publication metadata.
Details of future publications will be shared on our forthcoming publications page.
We welcome feedback as we continue to improve these statistics. Please contact the team at phs.adultscreening@phs.scot.
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides annual and quarterly cervical screening statistics. The report provides data on screening population coverage by age group, NHS board, deprivation and human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation status. In addition, data are presented on laboratory turnaround times and number of screening tests by NHS board and laboratory.
Main points
For the financial year 2021/22:
- The percentage of eligible women (those aged 25 to 64) who were up-to-date with their screening participation (known as 'Coverage') was 68.7%. This is down 0.7 percentage points compared with the previous year.
- Women from deprived areas are less likely to participate in the screening programme. For the most deprived areas, 62.4% of eligible women were screened, compared with 73.1% of women from the least deprived areas, a difference of more than 10 percentage points.
- Coverage was higher in the 50-64 age group (73.7%) than in the 25-49 age group (65.7%). Both groups saw a decrease relative to the previous year.
- In 2021/22, there were 280,000 cervical screening tests processed within the programme, which is substantially higher than the number processed in 2020/21 (174,299). This is largely due to recovery since the pausing of the screening programme in response to the COVID-19 pandemic from March to June 2020.
- In 2021/22, the laboratory turnaround time for 95% of all cervical screening tests processed in Scotland ranged from 18 days in Q2 to 38 days in Q4. Although quite variable, this is broadly in line with historic performance.
Background
From March 2020, the cervical screening test (also known as a smear test) takes a sample of cells from the cervix (neck of the womb) and checks it for the presence of HPV. If HPV is found, the sample is then tested for abnormal cells.
Prior to March 2020, women were invited for a cervical smear and samples were examined under a microscope for abnormal cells. HPV is the most common cause of cervical cancer, and this change is more likely to identify those women at risk of cervical cancer.
Further information
The next release of this publication is scheduled for May 2024.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact phs.cancerstats@phs.scot.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.