Scottish cervical screening programme statistics
Annual update to 31 March 2024

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides annual cervical screening statistics. This report provides data on coverage and uptake within the target screening population by health board of residence, deprivation and age. In addition, data are presented on laboratory services and screening processes.

The term "women and anyone with a cervix" is used to describe the target screening population, the full inclusion criteria for the programme are:

• Women (biological sex female at birth) with a cervix
• Age 25-64 years
• Age 65-70 years inclusive if previous screening results have shown changes that require further investigation or follow up.

For information on the future of these statistics, please see the planned developments and the data quality issues and resolution sections within the full report.

Main points

For financial year 2023/24:

• The cervical cancer screening programme has to meet both coverage and uptake thresholds of 80%. Coverage is the percentage of the target population eligible for screening at a given point in time who have had a cervical screening encounter within the past 3.5 or 5.5 years (depending on their age group). Uptake is the percentage of those invited for screening who have had a cervical screening encounter within six months (183 days) of their invitation or reminder letter.
• The cervical cancer screening programme achieved 63.3% coverage in the financial year 2023/24 compared with a target performance threshold of 80%; this was similar to the previous year.
• Coverage was lower in the most deprived areas at 56.5%, compared with 67.7% in the least deprived areas, a difference of more than 11 percentage points. This is a similar gap to previous years.
• Cervical screening uptake (within six months of the invite or reminder letter) was 51.9% in 2023/24, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from 50.5% in 2022/23, but not meeting the 80% threshold.
• Uptake was lowest among those aged 25-29 years, at 38.2%, but increased with age to a peak of 62.7% at age 45-49 years.
• 81.1% of samples processed by the laboratory services had results reported within two weeks (14 calendar days), which is above the desired threshold of 80%.
• Virology samples were introduced when HPV testing became the primary test. The percentage of failed HPV tests in Scotland has been less than or equal to 0.1% since they were introduced.
• Corrections to previous calculations of cervical screening coverage have been made to annual data since 2016/17. On average, these are 1.7% lower than previously reported. These overestimates had no effect on the running of the cervical screening programme itself.   
• 4 in 10 cervical cancers are detected through screening among women who are eligible for it. These cancers are often at an earlier, more treatable stage which is why anyone invited for cervical screening is encouraged to participate.

Background

Prior to March 2020, women and anyone with a cervix were invited for a cervical smear and samples were tested using cytology and examined under a microscope for abnormal cells. On 30 March 2020, Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing replaced cervical cytology as the primary (first) cervical screening test. Cytology based tests are still used as follow-up tests but only when HPV is found or if someone has previously had cell changes.

HPV testing is more accurate and reliable as a primary test than the previous cell testing methodology (cytology). No screening test will detect all cancers but the move to HPV testing will improve detection of pre-cancer and cancers in Scotland.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be November 2026.