The Orkney Islands and the Western Isles have seen a population boost as Scots escaped cities for a rural lifestyle during the pandemic.
National Records of Scotland (NRS) has delved deeper into figures which showed Scotland’s city population fell during the pandemic.
The NRS has now assessed almost 7,000 small geographic areas, or data zones, in Scotland to uncover more detail about the population change.
The Orkney Islands experienced the most population growth, with 66% of its data zones increasing, followed by Na h-Eileanan Siar (61%) and Shetland (60%).
In contrast, 19 out of 32 local authority areas experienced population decrease in more than half of their data zones.
Three areas in the west of Scotland saw the largest proportion of data zones decrease from mid-2020 to July 2021.
Accessible and remote areas had the largest increases in particular – by 13,200 (2%) and 4,700 (1.6%) respectively.
Three areas in the west of Scotland saw the largest proportion of data zones decrease from mid-2020 to July 2021.
They are West Dunbartonshire, with 69% of data zones decreasing in population, followed by Renfrewshire (64%) and Inverclyde (62%).
However, most people still live in large urban areas, (38%), and other urban areas (34%), the data shows.
Esther Roughsedge, a statistician at NRS, said: “The population of small geographical areas changes over time for many reasons, including birth and deaths as well as migration inwards and outwards.
“Every council area has pockets of population growth and decline.
“In the latest year, the largest proportions of data zone increasing in population were mainly in rural and island council areas.
“This is quite different to the patterns we saw the previous year.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel