Recorded assaults against public service workers have doubled in the last decade, according to a report.

The survey, for Unison, found there were 40,000 violent assaults on first sector staff in 2016, up from 20,000 in 2006.

Attacks on local authority workers were said to have "significantly" increased, with 4399 more assaults recorded in 2016 than the previous year.

Care workers are twice the national average risk of assault and nurses four times. School workers, such as teaching assistants, were also found to be subject to "consistently high" levels of assaults.

In the community and voluntary sector, 83% of staff said that their employer regarded the violence as "part of the job" - although most said their employer encouraged the reporting of incidents.

Scott Donohue, Unison's chair of health and safety committee said: "We cannot ignore a doubling of the figures over ten years.

"It is also reasonable to make the correlation between the swingeing cuts to councils and increase in violence to council workers. Staff tell us if you have to wait longer, or the service you need is no longer available, or a support worker has less time to spent with a client, it's being taken out on those working face to face with the public.

"We need to continue to understand the general upward trend. However, from this survey and what our members tell us the debate should not just be about how we most accurately report violence at work, but how we eliminate violence altogether."

This year's edition of the annual report, Violent Assaults on Public Service Staff in Scotland, was published as Unison members attended its and safety conference at the University of Stirling.

The union noted that some increases might reflect better reporting, but said this itself was unlikely to explain the change since 2006.