Scottish Islands Data Overview (2025)
The Scottish Islands Data Dashboard has been updated following a review of available data. This report summarises the findings. It highlights changes between data available in 2025 and data first collated in 2023 and gives an overview of longer term trends in Scotland's Islands.
13 Community Empowerment
Scottish islands have a strong sense of community belonging but it is declining.
Community ownership allows for a community to acquire and own land and other assets that could provide local housing, business development, community facilities, recreation facilities or greenspace. The Scottish islands are home to a sizeable number of community owned assets. Na h-Eileanan Siar has 73 community owned assets of the total 840 in Scotland. It also contains 153,717 hectares of community owned land, with 50% of the total land area in community ownership. In comparison, the percentage of Scotland’s total land area in community ownership is only 3%. Other island local authorities have fewer assets and smaller percentages of land in community ownership. For example, 2% of land in Highland is community owned, while only 0.07% of land in the Orkney islands is owned by communities.
According to data from the Scottish Islands Survey (2023), islanders also report a strong sense of community belonging. 71% of island residents see themselves belonging to their local community. This figure has declined from 82% in 2020 however. Similarly, in the Scottish Household Survey (2023), 89% of islanders either very strongly or fairly strongly agree that they belong to their immediate neighbourhood. 62% of island residents agree that there is a strong sense of community in their local area.
Source: Scottish Islands Survey, Scottish Government (2023)