This year's annual returns will be available to service providers for completion between 6 January and 2 March 2025. The closing date includes an extension of two weeks on our usual six-week deadline.
Each year, we ask you to complete an annual return. This gives us important information that helps us plan, inform and carry out our inspections and improvement work. We share some of the information with other organisations, such as the Scottish Social Services Council and the Scottish Government, and we use it to produce several statistical publications that you can view on our website.
The intelligence we gather helps us target our improvement activity and support within social care. It is a valuable source of baseline data across a variety of health and wellbeing indicators which we use to identify, drive and track improvement, for example infection control, nutrition and the recruitment and retention of staff. The data also helps us to identify trends and topics by both geographical area or service type, so that we can see where best to focus our improvement support work, for example, improvement workshops or new resources and guidance for care services across the sector.
The annual returns will be available for services to complete through our online eForms system. All services must complete their annual returns electronically, using the eForms system. It is important that services regularly check their eForms account to make sure that their email address is up to date, and that only authorised people have access to their account. All services should check their eForms email address now to ensure they are notified when the annual returns go live. You can do that here.
Even inactive services must submit an annual return.
Further information and guidance about annual returns will be made available in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can visit our website.