Scottish Islands Data Overview (2025)

Executive summary

This report provides a 2025 update of data relating to Scotland’s islands as collated in the Scottish Islands Data Dashboard (2025). The interactive dashboard responds to the commitment set out in the National Islands Plan to “review the availability, usefulness of, and the wider barriers to, island level data both at an individual island level, groups of islands and consider the creation of a ‘Scottish islands’ data level in order to better understand the challenges faced by island communities”.

The data snapshots provided here relate to the strategic objectives set out in the National Islands Plan which published in 2019. It covers: population; sustainable economic development; transport; housing: fuel poverty; digital connectivity; health, social care and wellbeing; environment biosecurity; climate change and energy; empowered island communities; arts, culture and language; and education.

This 2025 report highlights a number of changes since the publication of the first dashboard in 2023. Full detail is available in the dashboard itself as well as in the supporting list of tables for the 2025 update, which can be compared to the supporting tables published in 2023.

Previously, in 2020, Gross Value Added was declining across island regions. However in 2022, across most island regions, this is now increasing. Perceptions of the reliability and quality of public transport and access to information about transport have also broadly declined in the islands compared to 2020.

Islanders continue to have lower perceptions of both housing availability and affordability, despite rates of house building increasing across most island local authorities. After increasing steadily across all island regions from 2019 to 2022, house prices have now decreased in the Orkney Islands and Arran, Bute and the Cumbraes between 2022 and 2024 and have fluctuated significantly in Argyll Islands and The Uists and Barra islands.

Digital connectivity continues to improve in island regions. Recycling rates are slightly increasing in island local authorities; however, most areas still fall significantly below the Scottish average. Sense of community belonging is strong but has declined between 2020 and 2023.

Looking further back than 2023, the 2025 dashboard update shows that long-running positive attributes of Scotland’s islands, remain broadly the same. These include:

• Life expectancies have seen some fluctuation but remain predominantly higher in the islands than the Scottish average.
• Most island areas estimated to have higher employment rates compared with the employment rate for Scotland.
• Higher rates of growth in Gross Value Added in a number of island regions compared to the rate for Scotland.
• Improved access to high-speed internet in the islands in recent years.
• High levels of satisfaction with access to GPs, pharmacies and dental healthcare.
• High levels of cultural participation across the islands.
• High levels of school attendance across the islands.

Similarly, a number of challenges continue to persist in Scotland’s islands:

• Island populations either declining or growing more slowly than in mainland areas and having an increasingly older age profile across all island groups.
• Low satisfaction with the cost and quality of transport in island areas.
• High levels of non-resident home ownership compared to the Scottish average.
• Lower recycling rates compared with the Scottish average.
• Higher levels of energy inefficiency in homes and higher levels of fuel poverty across most island areas compared with the Scottish average.
• Significant potential risks to the islands from climate change in terms of flooding and contamination of freshwater.
• Higher suicide rates in most local authorities with islands compared with the Scottish average, with the exception of Shetland Islands Council.

As far as possible the Scottish Islands Data Dashboard (2025) uses the new the Scottish Islands Region Geography (2023) to frame existing data-sets^[1].