Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A town of 4,413 in Fife, Scotland.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Buckhaven 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 133rd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns: median sale £91,100, 2.1 years of area income; rent £868 a month. Its weakest is health (D−): life expectancy 71.6 for men, 76.9 for women.
The 3 things Buckhaven 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 Buckhaven is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Buckhaven 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 Buckhaven’s locality, 2 of them in the second category.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Buckhaven.
That puts Buckhaven below both Fife’s towns (27%) and Scotland’s towns (32%). 14% of residents are children under 15. The median resident of Buckhaven is 44.4 years old.
51% women, 49% men
About 95 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Buckhaven | Fife | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 14% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 13% | 13% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 23% | 24% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 27% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 22% | 20% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 25% | 17% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 10% | 8.2% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 11% | 12% | 11% |
| Degree level | 14% | 27% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Fife and Scotland: all residents of their towns · 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buckhaven Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 239 | – |
| Levenmouth AcademyLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,674 | D− |
On this, Buckhaven is below both Fife’s towns (77%) and Scotland’s towns (78%). Women here live to 76.9 on average and men to 71.6 (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 | Buckhaven | Fife | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 68% | 77% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 11% | 7.2% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 34% | 26% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL
In the comparison, Buckhaven comes below both Fife’s towns (£149K) and Scotland’s towns (£174K). Buckhaven is the second cheapest of the 26 towns in Fife, at £91,100. 39% of households live in social housing.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 26% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
For Buckhaven, that is above both Fife’s towns (3.4%) and Scotland’s towns (2.8%). At the census, 19% of commuters walked, cycled or took the bus or train.
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.
Buckhaven has 7 listed buildings inside its locality on Historic Environment Scotland’s list: 0 Category A, 2 Category B.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Buckhaven. Best known first.
CastleBalgonie Castle4.3 km outside town, to the northwest
Heritage railwayFife Heritage Railway1.7 km outside town, to the northeastMuseumMuseumMethil Heritage Centre1.2 km outside town, to the northeastMuseumMuseumWemyss Cave Museum & Visitor Centre1.8 km outside town, to the southwestMuseumMuseumAuld Wemyss Ways Heritage Centre4 km outside town, to the southwestPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
17 notable people were born in Buckhaven.
Alistair Stewart: House of Commons of Canada, Public domain · James Ireland Craig: Strebe, CC BY-SA 3.0
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buckhaven | 4,413 | — | — | A | — | D− |
| Methil | 10,712 | 1 | — | A | — | D− |
| Leven | 10,088 | 2.1 | — | A | — | D |
| Kennoway | 4,665 | 2.6 | — | A | — | D |
| Glenrothes | 37,466 | 5.7 | — | A | — | D |
| Kirkcaldy and Dysart | 51,135 | 6.2 | — | A | — | D |
| Leslie | 2,888 | 7.2 | — | A | — | D |
| Cardenden and Auchterderran | 5,266 | 8.8 | — | A | — | D− |
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.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £91,100, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 133rd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
GCSE results trail almost all towns in England (Department for Education, Attainment 8).
At the 2022 Census, 13% of Buckhaven’s 4,413 residents were 15 to 24 and 22% were 65 or over, against 12% and 19% across Scotland’s towns. Fewer households own their home than across Scotland’s towns: 47%, against 60%.
Band D council tax in Buckhaven is £1,574 for 2026–27, less than in 97% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
Town in Fife, Scotland
Buckhaven is a locality of 4,413 people, in the Fife 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.