NHS National Services Scotland

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) is a public body and national health board of NHSScotland.
Accountable to the Scottish Government, NSS works at the heart of Scotland’s health service, providing national strategic support services and expert advice to NHSScotland.
Its integral role to NHSScotland means the organisation works closely with other organisations across Scotland’s health and care landscape - especially NHS Boards - in the delivery of its services.
NSS employs around 3,400 highly specialised staff based in various locations across Scotland.
NSS began operations on 1 April 1974 as the Common Services Agency, formed in accordance with The National Health Service (Functions of the Common Services Agency) (Scotland) Order 1974. The agency's mandate was to provide national strategic support services and expert advice to Scotland's health sector while maximising health impacts and cost savings. This remains central to NSS's purpose today.
The UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Common Services Agency in a 2014 legal ruling, Healthcare at Home Limited v. The Common Services Agency. An unsuccessful tenderer had challenged the agency's contract award decision. In the course of the court's deliberations over the legal issues, Lord Reed spoke at some length of the various hypothetical persons whose judgment is held to be indicative of the assessment that a reasonable person might make, typically called the Man on the Clapham omnibus. The Court held that there was a long tradition in law of considering such hypothetical judgments, and rejected the need to consider the evidence of any actual witnesses in place of the hypothetical reasonable person.
In 2013, the Public Services Reform (Functions of the Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service) (Scotland) Order 2013 extended the remit of NSS, enabling the provision of services to other bodies, including local authorities and government departments.
The following year, the Public Bodies (Joint Working) Scotland Act 2014 reinforced this requirement to maximise health, financial, and environmental impacts by engaging with and offering services to the wider public sector in Scotland.
NSS operates across the whole of Scotland, providing a wide range of national services and managing one-third of the NHSScotland budget. Today, it has twelve national services aimed at supporting the health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland:
NSS played a pivotal role in the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic unfolded, NSS undertook a series of measures to support the healthcare system in Scotland.
One of the key areas of focus was procurement. NSS developed over 300 contracts, which directly supported Scotland’s response to the COVID-19 emergency. This included sourcing and distributing over 1 billion items of personal protective equipment (PPE) across Health and Social Care in Scotland.
In the realm of digital technology, NSS harnessed clinical innovation to support rapid and meaningful transformation in the healthcare landscape. This was particularly relevant as the healthcare sector underwent significant changes due to the pandemic.
NSS also played a crucial role in the establishment and operation of the NHS Louisa Jordan - a temporary hospital set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the NHS Louisa Jordan was not required to treat COVID-19 patients, it played a crucial role in supporting the remobilisation of NHSScotland.
NSS Programme Management teams, alongside wider national services offered by the board, also played a critical role in a wide range of COVID-19 programmes, including the establishment of a national testing infrastructure, and the national roll out of Scotland’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.
The latest NSS Strategic Framework for 2024-2026 sets out the organisation’s purpose, vision, priorities and objectives, as well as the NHSScotland values.
Purpose
NSS’s purpose is to provide national solutions to improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland. It supports NHSScotland and the wider needs of health and care to ensure that people in Scotland can lead healthy and active lives and are appropriately cared for.
Vision
NSS’s vision is to be integral to Scotland’s health and care service. Its wide-ranging national infrastructure, services, and solutions will continue to play an important role in the recovery and renewal of health and care. NSS aims to deliver the right national solutions effectively and efficiently, benefiting everyone in Scotland.
Priorities
In summary, there are three strategic priorities that summarise the support of NSS to health and care organisations across Scotland:
Strategic Objectives
NSS has four strategic objectives to guide its direction and decision making and ensure alignment with wider NHSScotland strategies: