A comprehensive investigation into service provision across southern Scotland has documented systematic failures in meeting fundamental human rights obligations around food security, healthcare access and adequate housing for residents across the region.
The Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) conducted the study across eight local authority areas serving more than one million people, visiting communities including Stranraer, Ayr, Dumfries, Kilmarnock, Hamilton, Irvine, Arran, Galashiels, Kelso, Dalkeith, Haddington, Melrose, Ardrossan and Tranent during February and March.
The research assessed the period from January 2016 to January 2026, examining how economic, social and cultural rights were being realised across the region. According to reporting on the findings, a survey conducted for the report found that 55% of respondents worried about affording food, and 46% relied on a food bank or knew someone who did.
Overall, the south of Scotland is a region where many communities and duty bearers are working hard to protect dignity and their human rights, often in difficult circumstances. But we have also found clear human rights failures. In many areas, rights are not improving. In several areas, they are getting worse.
What are the main barriers to accessing rights?
The SHRC identified accessibility as the biggest challenge facing residents, with the commission concluding that even where services existed, they were frequently unreachable in practice. The report identifies three distinct barriers to rights: accessibility, affordability and fragility, with fragility described as reliance on short-term funding, volunteers and goodwill rather than sustained public investment.
Prof Angela O'Hagan, who chairs the commission, characterised the findings as highlighting the significant
gaps between rights everyone was entitled to and the lived reality in southern Scotland, describing the report as a
call to actionfor everyone who managed and delivered services, with people in the area feeling
distant from decision making.
How do service gaps affect individual residents?
The report includes detailed case studies illustrating the consequences of fragmented service provision. One man who worked as a landscape gardener before suffering a stroke and later contracting Lyme disease after being bitten by a tick was referred by a locum neurologist to a specialist clinic in another south of Scotland health board, only to be rejected because he did not live in the correct area.
We don't have a national health service, we've got a regional health service. I'm just left in limbo, unable to work and unable to get better, even though I know there's a solution out there.
Another case documented in the report involved a woman attempting to navigate healthcare services for her former soldier husband. She described the experience as
impossible, adding that
he was trapped in the health care system here, and he became suicidal. He stood on the front line to protect everybody else's rights, and nobody would help him.
A charity service manager told the SHRC:
You have got villages dotted around who don't get the support they should. There's a big disparity between the town and rural areas which needs to be addressed. It shouldn't matter where you are.
What specific accessibility challenges exist?
Wheelchair accessibility represents a particularly acute problem in the region. Wheelchair user Janice Johnstone recently highlighted the difficulties faced in finding an accessible taxi, with only three available across Dumfries and Galloway. The issue of accessibility to services has been regularly raised in southern Scotland, with expectant mothers in Wigtownshire facing a 70-mile journey to access maternity services in Dumfries, a situation that is the subject of a long-running campaign and a nationwide review of provision now under way.
Transport connectivity more broadly affects multiple aspects of life in the region. Residents of Newcastleton have spoken of how the extension of the Borders Railway to stop in their village could be
life-changing, with a feasibility study currently examining ways to take that forward. Dumfries and Galloway Council was forced to intervene last year after bus operator Stagecoach effectively withdrew from the region, leaving significant gaps in service coverage.
What is the government's response?
Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth acknowledged that the issues highlighted were felt in many parts of the country and that public service reform could help
push power outto communities. During a visit to Dumfries this week, she noted that part of the issue of people feeling distant from government was about geography, which was a
matter of fact.
Gilruth said the Scottish government already offered free transport for a range of groups, including bus travel for under 22s, over 60s and those with disabilities. She acknowledged that transport was
challengingin the area but added that
there are other issues in this part of the world around about some of these bus routes simply not existing anymore. She said powers were available to allow local government to franchise and take on their own approaches, and those opportunities needed to be examined.
Gilruth highlighted the potential for projects to boost the region's economy and discussed the unique challenges facing the area in terms of connectivity and how that affected education, health and housing. She noted that a new prime minister was coming into power with a devolution agenda, and Scotland expected
further powers to flow back to Scotland and with that commensurate funding. She said the government then had
an opportunity to work on how we push that power out of Edinburgh and down into our communities.
What happens next?
The Scottish Human Rights Commission has called on the Scottish Government, councils and NHS boards to act urgently on the findings and respond to them. According to the commission's statement, it will ask public authorities to report progress on the findings to Scottish Parliament committees, establishing a mechanism for ongoing accountability and monitoring of improvements in service provision and rights realisation across the region.
Key Facts
- The SHRC study examined eight local authority areas in southern Scotland serving more than one million people over a ten-year period from January 2016 to January 2026
- According to the survey data, 55% of respondents worried about affording food, with 46% relying on food banks or knowing someone who did
- The report identifies three barriers to rights: accessibility, affordability and fragility, with fragility defined as reliance on short-term funding rather than sustained investment
- Only three wheelchair-accessible taxis operate across Dumfries and Galloway, creating severe mobility challenges for disabled residents
- Expectant mothers in Wigtownshire must travel 70 miles to access maternity services in Dumfries
