FOI 25-344 Violent Against Staff
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-344 Violent Against Staff
- Request Date
- 08 Aug 2025
- Response Date
- 25 Aug 2025
- Information Requested
For the time period 1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025 (or your nearest 12-month period), please provide the following:
- total number of violent incidents on your staff broken down by job title/category of worker
- a breakdown of the nature of the violent incident e.g., verbal, physical, threatening behaviour
- how many violent incidents have been reported under RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences) Regulations, with a breakdown by job title/category of worker
Please could you break this information down into incidents involving female staff / male staff.
Violent incidents can include verbal abuse or threats including face to face; online and via telephone; physical attacks; threatening behaviour; racial abuse and sexual harassment/violence.
- Response
The Service has a range of measures in place to help protect staff, known or reported areas where staff have previously faced violence or threatening behaviour are taken into consideration and communicated to attending crews. Scottish Ambulance staff are trained in managing aggression and assessing risk, enabling them to better judge when they need to wait for support from the Police, or request additional service support.
During the period of 1st April 2024 – 31st March 2025 there were 367 reported violent incidents on Scottish Ambulance staff. The information is not gathered in a way to allow us to break it down by job title/category gender etc, it is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held. It should be considered that ALL staff within the Scottish Ambulance Service have the capability to report violent incidents experienced while working and these figures reflect all incidents reported.
Of the 367 incidents, 201 of these incidents are where staff experienced physical assault – 9 of which were RIDDOR. There were 166 incidents reported of verbal assault, none of these were RIDDOR.
