How many attacks on emergency service staff have been reported in each year since 1999, broken down by NHS board area.

The police recorded crime statistics collected centrally are based on an aggregate return at local authority level, and as such, do not distinguish the circumstances of the crime, such as the occupation of the victim. In addition, as local authority areas do not nest into NHS health board areas, it is not possible to produce a breakdown of recorded crime data by NHS board areas.
Following the introduction of the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, a new crime code (Common Assault of an Emergency Worker) was created. This crime code also includes offences under the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 and the Police Act 1996. Prior to this, a common assault on an emergency worker would have been recorded and classified as a Common assault and as the dataset cannot be interrogated on the basis of occupation of the victim, it is not possible to identify emergency workers prior to 2005-06. Where an emergency worker is the victim of a Serious assault, these will be included within the Serious assault crime code. However it is not possible to identify emergency workers separately.
The following table shows the number of offences of Common assault of an emergency worker for Scotland since the introduction of the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005.
Financial Year
Common assault of an emergency worker1
2005-062
518
2006-07
723
2007-08
753
2008-09
1,150
2009-10
5,320
2010-11
6,456
2011-12
7,107
2012-13
6,514
Notes:
1. In 2010, an inconsistency in the classification of assaults on police officers was identified. Some police forces had continued to classify assaults on police officers as an offence of Common Assault rather than the new offence of Common assault of an emergency worker. As a result, 2009-10 is the first year in which all police forces were consistently classifying common assaults on police officers under this new offence.
2. The Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 came into force on 9 May 2005.
In June 2010, Justice Analytical Services in the Scottish Government produced a short paper which reports on the results of a special exercise to investigate these classification issues. This paper is publicly available via the following web link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/JusticeOccasional.