Scottish Public Service Awards 2025

This is the Twelfth year of the Scottish Public Service Awards (SPSA), which Holyrood Communications runs in partnership with the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government.

Awards will be given across 11 categories at this year’s award ceremony in the Garden Lobby of the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday 3 December.

These remarkable awards have been created to celebrate the often-unsung contribution made to Scotland’s civic society from within the civil service, Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, local government, health and social care sector, broader public sector and their partners within the Third Sector.

Holyrood is proud to play a part in showcasing some of the innovative and thought-provoking work being done the length and breadth of Scotland.

Inspired by the late Campbell Christie and his incredible efforts to help reform Scotland’s public services, Holyrood launched the awards in 2014 with the aim of recognising and rewarding best practice, teamwork, innovation, and clear leadership across Scotland’s diverse public services.

The awards have now become a firm fixture in all our calendars, and nominations consistently celebrate the talent, commitment and all-round compassion that exists within Scottish public service.

For more information on last year’s winners, read the full story here.
For all of last year’s photos, visit our Flickr.

The Campbell Christie Public Service Reform Award

An award for the team that best embodies the spirit of public service reform as envisaged by Campbell Christie in his ground-breaking vision for public service delivery of the future. With a focus on prevention, working across departmental and organisational boundaries, placing the citizen at the centre of service delivery, and working efficiently to tackle the causes of social ills, rather than solely the symptoms.

The Campaign of the Year Award

This award recognises exceptional performance by a team or individual in the delivery of a highly engaging, imaginative and creative communications campaign that can demonstrate real impact. Campaigns can be either internal or external stakeholders/audiences, use any channel, and any budget. The judges are looking for measurable change, campaign recognition and real audience engagement.

The Project and Programme Management Award

This award celebrates a team or individual demonstrating excellent practice in project, programme and portfolio management, which has led to positive change for good. The judges are looking for why the project, programme or portfolio management stood out as exceptional, and what positive impacts this had. Why was this project head and shoulders above the rest and what identifiable approaches and processes were implemented that resulted in positive outcomes and ambitions being achieved?

The Commercial Partnerships Award

Recognising a team or individual that has demonstrated exemplary commercial practice, achieving better outcomes for public bodies. This category is open to any public body in a commercial partnership that has shown excellence in collaborative working, including contract negotiations and management, commercial policy development, smart procurement, best practice supplier management, or new models of public service delivery.

The Leadership Award

The Leadership Award is open to any individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities at any level. Nominations should demonstrate how the nominee’s leadership has inspired those around them, and the impact they have made on civic society.

The Digital Public Services Award 
(in association with Leidos)

This award recognises the innovative use of digital technology to solve problems and/or improve efficiencies and ultimately deliver improvements in public services to the citizen. The judges are looking for measurable outcomes.

The Community Engagement Award

This award recognises the work of public bodies and their delivery partners in ensuring that the communities they serve are fully engaged in the development and delivery of public services in their area. Nominees should show how these links have been made and describe what the outcome was.

The Championing Diversity and Inclusion Award

An award for an individual, team, group or network that demonstrably promote the values of equality, diversity and inclusion by initiating and leading action to remove barriers of discrimination and prejudice and improve the working experience and engagement levels of all employees across all strands of diversity.

The Voluntary Sector Partnership Award 
(in association with SCVO)

This award will recognise public sector organisations working in partnership with charities or community organisations to deliver better outcomes in public services. Increasingly, these partnerships provide the day-to-day services that are vital to people and communities throughout Scotland. They are often crucial for the wellbeing, or even survival, of citizens and community assets that could otherwise slip through the cracks.

The Sustainability Award

A submission in this category should demonstrate how an organisation or team has implemented policies, campaigns or technologies to help tackle the climate emergency, contribute to net zero emissions or to increase resilience to climate change in civic society. This award recognises those working towards a greener and more sustainable economy that benefits all. Entries should be supported by results.

The Policy into Practice Award

This award recognises a project or approach by an individual, organisation or community-based initiative that has applied public policy to an issue to make a real difference in terms of practical delivery, user experience or costs effectiveness. This award will recognise the efficacy of taking a paper policy designed in theory and putting it into real-life practice and being able to demonstrate its worth in terms of improving the lives of Scots.

The Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement award recognises the achievements of someone who holds the good of public service to their very core. This is not open to public nomination and will be chosen by the judges.

It’s free to enter and nominations are submitted through our website (nominations are expected to open in June 2025).

You will need to provide:

Summary of your nomination (100 words)
Nomination including measurable benefits and impact (300 words)
Opportunity to include a testimonial (150 words)
Opportunity to upload up to three supporting items (video, images, testimonial)

You can enter the same project for multiple categories provided the nomination is tailored to the category.

Entry Eligibility

Unless stated under the category, entries are welcomed by those working in or with Scotland’s civic society from our civil service, Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, local government, health and social care sector, broader public sector and their partners within the Third Sector.

Shortlist

The shortlist will be announced in November and all shortlisted organisations will receive an invitation for the nominator and a colleague to attend the awards ceremony at the Scottish Parliament on 3 December, 6-8.30pm, where the winners will be announced.

Benefits of Entering

The SPSA’s offer an excellent way of celebrating success and sharing innovation and best practice, whilst raising the profile of your project, team or programme.