Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A town of 11,373 in Angus, Scotland. Band D council tax is £1,599.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Carnoustie has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below. Its strongest subject is cost of living (A): the 196th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns: median sale £189,200, 4.4 years of area income; rent £838 a month. Its weakest is hazard risk (C): 2.2% of homes at high or medium risk of flooding from rivers or the sea.
The 3 things Carnoustie does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Carnoustie is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Carnoustie has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 7 buildings inside Carnoustie’s locality, 4 of them in the second category.
The archive holds 1 old photo or postcard going back to 1900.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Carnoustie.
On this, Carnoustie is above both Angus’ towns (63%) and Scotland’s towns (60%). 14% of households live in social housing. Carnoustie is the second most expensive of the 7 towns in Angus, at £189,200.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL
Two of its 4 schools are below, each with why it’s listed. The grade uses the secondaries its children go to; Scotland publishes no primary results by school.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burnside Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 317 | – |
| Carnoustie High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 827 | C+ |
In the comparison, Carnoustie comes above both Angus’ towns (25%) and Scotland’s towns (19%). Those aged 15 to 24 account for 9.1% of residents. Half the people of Carnoustie are older than 48.7.
53% women, 47% men
About 90 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women. Women live longer than men, so towns with many older residents have more women.
| Carnoustie | Angus | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 15% | 15% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 9.1% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 21% | 23% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 27% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 26% | 25% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 13% | 18% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 11% | 10% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 11% | 10% | 11% |
| Degree level | 31% | 25% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Angus and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
For Carnoustie, that is below both Angus’ towns (6.7%) and Scotland’s towns (7.2%). Women here live to 81.5 on average and men to 79.2 (2020–24). These answers aren’t adjusted for age, so young towns look healthier; the Health Grade uses age-adjusted measures, including life expectancy and early deaths.
| Census 2022 | Carnoustie | Angus | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 80% | 78% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 5.8% | 6.7% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 23% | 26% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 27% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
Carnoustie sits below both Angus’ towns (4%) and Scotland’s towns (2.8%) on this measure. For 20% of commuters, work was under 5 km away.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
No town in Angus has fewer listed buildings for its size than Carnoustie. Of Carnoustie’s land, 0% lies in conservation areas, below Angus’ towns (4%) and close to Scotland’s towns (1%).
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
16 notable people were born in Carnoustie.
Ian McDiarmid: Miguel Discart, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Kevin McDonald: Steindy 23:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0 · Craig Forsyth: Wfcfan1, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Macdonald Smith: United States of America, Public domain · George Low Sr.: Mecca Cigarettes "Series of Champions", Public domain
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carnoustie | 11,373 | — | — | A | — | C |
| Monifieth | 9,356 | 4.2 | — | B+ | — | C+ |
| Arbroath | 23,487 | 6.5 | — | A | — | D |
| Tayport | 3,967 | 7.3 | — | A | — | C− |
| Dundee | 147,365 | 9.5 | — | B+ | — | D− |
| Newport-on-Tay and Wormit | 4,119 | 10 | — | B | — | B |
| Forfar | 13,774 | 12 | — | A | — | D |
| St Andrews | 16,465 | 12 | — | C | — | C+ |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
Band D council tax in Carnoustie is £1,599 for 2026–27, less than in 95% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
Surface water isn’t included. Check a specific address on GOV.UK’s flood risk service.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £189,200, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 196th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Town in Angus, Scotland
Carnoustie is a locality of 11,373 people, in the Angus council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.