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

Population projections can help us 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 2022 mid-year population estimates (the population as at 30 June 2022) as the base year from which to project and cover the period from mid-2022 to mid-2037.

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 four councils, of these councils two chose to use Housing Market Areas, one chose Community Planning Partnership (CPP) locality areas and one used Place Boundaries 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 2022-based sub-national population projections for council areas. Therefore, the sum of population projections for each small area within the council will 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 2022 mid-year estimates and uses recent trends; therefore, they do take account of recent changes occurring as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. In some areas this has resulted in large fluctuations in migration. This is most notable in areas where a large student population is present as well as some rural areas. Although migration has fluctuated, in most areas where there was a large fluctuation in migration in mid-2020 to mid-2021, this is followed by a similar scale fluctuation in the opposite direction between mid-2021 and mid-2022. Within the model, migrant inflow and outflow for each age-sex category uses an average over the most recent five years, mid-2018 to mid-2022, therefore although the years affected by COVID-19 are included in this estimate, the average period smooths out much of these fluctuations. Some councils were able to provide feedback on the projections and highlight areas where significant fluctuations were likely to have impacted the quality of migration assumptions. In these instances, it was agreed that migration assumptions could be altered to exclude the years where significant fluctuation was experienced. Details of where assumptions have been adjusted are documented in the notes of each council projection file.

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 2022 mid-year estimates and uses recent trends; therefore, they do take account of recent changes occurring as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. This may have impacted the quality of migration assumptions in some areas.

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-2018 to mid-2022 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 Methodology and Limitations document.

NRS publishes national population projections, population projections for council areas and health boards and household projections council areas. These are available on the  NRS website

This is the second iteration of sub-council area population projections produced by the Improvement Service following the 2018-based projections published in 2020. The Improvement Service will continue to assess how they are used, ongoing demand and capacity to determine whether to produce an updated set of projections when new sub-national population projections for council areas are published by NRS. If you would like to share how you are using the projections and provide feedback please contact research@improvementservice.org.uk.