Scottish Household Survey 2025 findings: Neighbourhoods and Communities

Neighbourhoods

In 2025, over nine in 10 adults (94%) rated their neighbourhood as a ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ good place to live, stable from 2024. Over half of adults in Scotland (55%) rated their neighbourhood as a ‘very good’ place to live (Table 1). This is a slight increase, from 54% in 2024. The proportion of people who rate their neighbourhood as a ‘very good’ place to live has historically (since 1999) been between 50% and 57%, so this is a relatively stable measure.

Differences between places and sub-groups

Neighbourhood ratings vary by area deprivation. Adults in the 20% least deprived areas were more likely to rate their neighbourhood as a ‘very good’ place to live than those in the 20% most deprived areas (76% in the least deprived areas, compared to 30% in the most deprived areas) (Table 5 of the accompanying workbook and Figure 1).

Figure 1 Neighbourhood ratings improve as deprivation goes down

Percentage of adults who rate their neighbourhood as a 'very good' and 'fairly good' place to live by SIMD, 2025, Scotland. [1]

Neighbourhood ratings also vary by whether people live in urban or rural settings, and by age, disability and ethnicity (Tables 2, 3, and 7 to 10).

Neighbourhood ratings increase with age. In 2025, 48% of 16 to 24 year olds rated their neighbourhood as a ‘very good’ place to live, this rises to almost two thirds (65%) of those aged 75 and over (Tables 7 and 8).

Seventy-four percent of people in remote rural areas described their neighbourhood as a ‘very good’ place to live, compared to 51% in both large urban areas and other urban areas (Table 2). [2]

Disabled people are also less likely to rate their neighbourhoods positively. Forty-nine percent of disabled people rated their neighbourhoods as a ‘very good’ place to live, compared to 57% of non-disabled people (Table 9).

Footnotes