FOI 26-086 Staff Sickness Hours

Freedom of Information Request

Reference
FOI 26-086 Staff Sickness Hours
Request Date
17 Feb 2026
Response Date
17 Mar 2026
Information Requested

Can FOI25-288 be updated to capture full 2025 data please and add sickness hours logged from musculoskeletal reasons for financial years from 2017 until 2025.  

That is:  

  1. The number of staff working hours. 
  2. The number of working hours lost to staff sickness absence. 
  3. The number of working hours lost to staff sickness absence due to Anxiety/Stress/Depression and Musculoskeletal reasons. 

 

If musculoskeletal can be broken down further into body area eg back, neck, legs that would be great 

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 Service 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. 

The wellbeing of our hardworking staff is a key priority for the Service, and we have put additional measures in place and increased support over the last year in line with our Health and Wellbeing Strategy. We have also been working in partnership with key hospital sites to reduce delays in patient handover. 

Please see the attached sheet detailing the information requested above.  The information provided for 2025/2026 is for 01/04/2025-31/12/2025. 

  

Important Information to Consider when Interpreting this Data 

  • The information provided is inclusive of ALL staff within the Scottish Ambulance Service 
  • An employee may be counted in more than one year. For example: if employee is absent from January 2019 to 31 May 2020, they will be counted in the figures for 2019/20 and 2020/21.  
  • For Q3, staff sickness is recorded as sickness reason 10. Stress/Anxiety/depression.  
  • An employee is counted in a year if they had an absence due to anxiety, stress or depression of any length of time in that year. 
Response Documents

FOI26 086 Data (XLSX | 11KB)

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