The 'go to' organisation for Local Government improvement in Scotland

Population projections can help councils understand the potential future size and make-up of local populations and inform forward planning by councils and other partners. Small area population projections can be useful for determining service provision requirements which vary considerably across different areas within the council. These differences are not captured in sub-national projections.

The projections use 2018 mid-year population estimates (the population as at 30 June 2018) as the base year from which to project and cover the period from mid-2018 to mid-2030.

The population projections cover sub-council areas for all 32 council areas in Scotland. The default geography is Multi-Member Wards. Each council was given the opportunity to choose an alternative geography rather than Multi-Member Wards. Alternative geographies were chosen by 6 councils, of these councils 3 chose to use Housing Market Areas, 1 chose Community Planning Partnership (CPP) locality areas, 1 used community areas and 1 used bespoke neighbourhoods. Details of which geographies are used for each council are available in the Project Overview document.

The population projections were constrained to (made consistent with) the most recently published NRS 2018-based sub-national population projections for council areas. Therefore, the sum of population projections for each small area within the council should match with the NRS population projections for the council.

The projections are trend-based, making assumptions about future levels of fertility, mortality and migration based on levels observed over a five-year reference period preceding the projections for each local area. Therefore, they give an indication of what the future population, by age and sex structure, might be if recent local levels of fertility, mortality and migration continue, and take no account of policy or development aims within councils, which is consistent with routine NRS population projections. Results were only produced for the principal projection and do not include projections using alternative assumptions such as high or low migration.

This set of projections is based on the 2018 mid-year estimates and uses recent trends; therefore, they do not take account of recent and future changes occurring as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. This is also true of the national and subnational projections published by NRS. However, the input and output files used in creating this set of projections will be made available on request for local authorities to use themselves. The NRS have also made resources available to support local authorities in producing their own projections using POPGROUP software. It is hoped that these materials will enable local authorities to build in their own assumptions into the standard set of projections if they wish to build on their understanding in their local area.

As with the NRS sub-national population projections (SNPPs), the sub-council area projections are trend-based. They are; therefore, not policy-based forecasts of what government expects to happen. Many social and economic factors influence population change including policies adopted by both central and local government, and levels of house building. This set of projections is based on the 2018 mid-year estimates and uses recent trends; therefore, they do not take account of recent and future changes occurring as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. This is also true of the national and subnational projections published by NRS.

Caution should be exercised when using these projections as smaller areas show more short-term change than larger areas. The local levels of fertility, mortality and migration and other changes in age-sex composition estimated from mid-2014 to mid-2018 are continued for the length of the projection. As the process of change is cumulative, the reliability of projections decreases over time and this is particularly true for small areas.

The projections must be also examined and used with caution for areas with large institutional populations/special populations. Projections may be less reliable if a major institution is present, such as a prison, student halls of residence or armed forces base, collectively known as special populations. Details of the assumptions made about special populations are available in the Cautions and Caveats document, and further information about limitations are available in the Methodology and Limitations document.

Users can create their own small area population projections using the industry standard demographic forecasting software, POPGROUP. The NRS have made user guidance and instructional videos available, to support users to produce population projections using POPGROUP. They have also made a data utility tool available, which aggregates past population, births and deaths data for small areas, to support users to create their own input data files for custom geographies. The input and output files used in the current set of projections are also available for users who want to replicate the published set of mid-2018 based population projections for Scottish Sub-Council Areas using different assumptions. To access these, please contact the Improvement Service at research@improvementservice.org.uk. These files can be used alongside the NRS resources outlined above to create variant projections with different assumptions on fertility, mortality and migration.

NRS publishes national population projections and population projections and household projections for Council Areas, Health Boards, Strategic Development Plan Areas and National Parks. These are available on the NRS website.

Currently this project has been undertaken as a one-off piece of work, however the Improvement Service will assess how they are used, ongoing demand and capacity to determine whether to produce an updated set of projections. If you would like to share how you are using the projections and provide feedback please contact research@improvementservice.org.uk.