FOI 26-291 Violent Incidents Against SAS Staff

Freedom of Information Request

Reference

FOI 26-291 Violent Incidents Against SAS Staff

Request Date

30 Jun 2026

Response Date

02 Jul 2026

Information Requested

For the time period 1st April 2025 to 31st March 2026 (or your nearest 12-month period), please provide the following:   

  

1. total number of violent incidents on your staff broken down by job title/category of worker  

  

1. a breakdown of the nature of the violent incident e.g. verbal, physical, threatening behaviour  

  

1. h​ow 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

Q1 - The Scottish Ambulance Service recorded 386 violent incidents involving staff during the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. 

 

Type of incident	Number of incidents
Physical assault	209
Verbal assault	177
Total	386

 

Q2 – The above information is the way in which violent incidents are categorised.  The Scottish Ambulance Service does not record all categories listed in your request (for example, threatening behaviour, racial abuse, online abuse, sexual harassment/violence) in a format that would allow separate reporting from the data provided.  To provide this information would take a manual review of each incident above and applying complex skill and judgement to create new categories.  Under the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 legislation, authorities are not required to create new information to answer requests. 

 

It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of FOISA as information not held. 

 

Q3 -  Seven assault incidents were reported under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).  The job categories of the staff involved are Paramedic, Technician and Ambulance Care Assistant/Urgentier.   

We have not provided a breakdown by job title/category of worker.  This information is exempt under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information). The number of incidents within individual staff groups is very small and, when combined with other information being released, could lead to the identification of individual members of staff. We therefore consider that disclosure would contravene the data protection principles set out in UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. 

 

 

Gender	Verbal assaults	Physical assaults	Total
Male	94	112	206
Female	84	96	180
Total	178	208	386