Scotland ‘very close’ to meeting target for 1,000 funded rehab places – minister

The Scottish Government has “come close to meeting” – or may even have met – a key target on residential rehabilitation ahead of schedule, a report has revealed.

It comes as Public Health Scotland said access to publicly funded rehab had “broadly doubled” over the past five years.

As part of Scottish Government efforts to tackle the country’s drugs problem, ministers had previously committed to funding 1,000 residential rehab placements a year by 2026.

Figures from Public Health Scotland showed that 993 Scots entered a publicly funded residential rehab place in 2024-25.

With the report acknowledging that not all providers of such care had submitted details of placements, Public Health Scotland said the data suggested “the Scottish Government has already come close to meeting, and possibly has already met, its 2026 target in financial year 2024-25”.

The figures covered 24 different rehab centres, which are operated by 16 different providers, with a total of 1,773 individuals seeking help over 2024-25 with places that were both publicly and privately funded.

Overall, the report found that access to residential rehab, on either a publicly or privately funded basis, had “increased slightly” in Scotland between 2019-20 and 2024-25.

But, it added that the number of publicly funded places had “substantially improved” over the period, with the report saying the total number of such places is “estimated to have broadly doubled between 2019-20 and 2024-25”.

Drugs and alcohol policy minister Maree Todd welcomed the report, saying: “I am pleased to see the impact of our expansion of access across Scotland and that we are very close to reaching our target of 1,000 people a year being publicly funded to go to residential rehab.”

She said: “Access to publicly funded places has substantially improved and is estimated to have broadly doubled between 2019-20 and 2024-25.

“Thanks to our investment of £38 million, as part of our overall commitment to make £100 million available for residential rehabilitation, we have supported the development or expansion of eight services.

“We are also working with partners to further develop clear pathways and our £2 million additional placement fund supports placements in areas where there is high demand.”

The minister said: “We are providing record levels of funding for drugs and alcohol programmes and are widening access to treatment and life-saving naloxone.

“We opened the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility and are working at pace with local partners to get drug-checking services up and running as soon as possible.”