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The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has published today statistics on civil business in Scotland. The period covered is 2019/20 to 2025/26 to date.
The updated statistics show the trends and business levels in Scotland’s civil courts with useful thematic categories like ‘Family’, ‘Debt’ and ‘Personal Injury’ and there is data relating to deceased estates (Commissary) and civil appeals.
Civil insights are included to provide users of civil data with information that has never before been published for Scotland like pursuer and defender solicitor representation levels and average weeks from case initiation to case disposal.
The statistics show that in the financial year 2025/26 to date, Debt actions make up over a quarter of civil business (25.1%) in Scotland with Commissary the next biggest proportion of the business at 21.4% while Personal Injury accounts for 10.0% of civil cases then Family actions at 8.9%. 73% of Family actions relate to Divorce and Dissolution.
The newly released workbook now also includes key information on the usage of Civil Online and mode of attendance in Court.
30% of cases initiated in the Sheriff Court are submitted via the Civil Online portal. The vast majority of these initiations relate to Simple Procedure. Since early September 2025, users have been able to initiate All‑Scotland Sheriff Personal Injury Court cases through the portal, which has resulted in 26% of all initiations in the financial year to date being submitted online.
In the financial year to date, half of Sheriff Court hearings have taken place virtually and the next biggest proportion were in person (43%). In the All‑Scotland Sheriff Personal Injury Court 84% of all hearings have taken place virtually with the remaining 16% taking place in person, hybrid or administratively processed. In the Court of Session over half of the hearings took place in person (55%) with the rest being dealt with virtually (18%), hybrid (15%) or administratively processed (12%).
