Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Council tax at Band D comes to £1,574. 7,157 residents make their home in this town in Fife, Scotland.
Lochgelly’s strongest is cost of living: homes sell for a median £123,000, about 2.8 times local household income. The weak point is health — men here can expect to live to 76.8, women to 79.6. Schools are weaker too: school leavers’ results beat 6% of Scottish towns. Hazard risk is lower than in most UK towns (A).
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · life expectancy, ONS · flood risk, SEPA. Police Scotland publishes no street-level crime, which leaves Lochgelly without a Safety Grade or an overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
The 3 things Lochgelly 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 Lochgelly is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland publishes no street-level crime, which leaves Lochgelly without a Safety Grade or an overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 6 buildings inside Lochgelly’s locality, 4 of them in the second category.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Lochgelly.
People aged 15 to 24 make up 9.6% of the town, below both Fife’s towns (13%) and Scotland’s towns (12%). Line up the people of Lochgelly by age and the one in the middle is 44.4. A fifth of residents are 65 or over.
50% women, 50% men
About an even split. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Lochgelly | Fife | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 9.6% | 13% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 25% | 24% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 29% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 20% | 20% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 24% | 17% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 12% | 8.2% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 8.7% | 12% | 11% |
| Degree level | 17% | 27% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Fife and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Some 1,299 pupils attend Lochgelly’s three primaries and one secondary. Below are two of its 4 schools, each with why it was picked.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Patrick's R C Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 177 | – |
| Lochgelly High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 777 | D |
29% of residents have a disability, above Fife’s towns (26%) and Scotland’s towns (24%) alike. Self-reported good health: 73% of Lochgelly’s residents. Poor health, by residents’ own account, affects nearly a tenth of the town.
| Census 2022 | Lochgelly | Fife | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 73% | 77% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 9.2% | 7.2% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 29% | 26% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · Self-reported health favours young towns, since these answers ignore age; the Health Grade leans on age-adjusted measures such as life expectancy and early deaths.
30% live in social housing, higher than both Fife’s towns (24%) and Scotland’s towns (24%). 320 sales in Lochgelly’s data zones from 2023 to 2025 make up the median of £123,000. Private rents average £868 a month across the Fife council area.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL · The Scottish median is our estimate from data-zone sales, brought to early-2025 prices.
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.
Driving is how just over four in five commuters got to work at the census. Short trips to work, under 5 km: 25%, below both Fife’s towns (38%) and Scotland’s towns (44%). In addition, at the census, 27% of workers worked mainly from home. Of the commuters living in Lochgelly, 9% work in the town itself.
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.
Lochgelly counts 6 listed buildings on the national list (Historic Environment Scotland): 4 Category B. Scaled to its population, Lochgelly has 8 listed buildings per 10,000 people, lower than both Fife’s towns (33) and Scotland’s towns (22).
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
22 notable people were born in Lochgelly.
Jennie Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge: not credited (Life time: not applicable), Public domain · Andrew Gray: No coneguts, Public domain · Bob McKinlay: Flimda, CC BY 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lochgelly | 7,157 | — | — | A | — | D− |
| Cowdenbeath and Lumphinnans | 11,979 | 2.1 | — | A | — | D− |
| Cardenden and Auchterderran | 5,266 | 2.3 | — | A | — | D− |
| Ballingry | 5,823 | 2.4 | — | A | — | D− |
| Kelty | 6,898 | 2.9 | — | A | — | D |
| Crossgates | 2,993 | 3.8 | — | A | — | C− |
| Burntisland | 6,259 | 5.3 | — | A | — | D |
| Kirkcaldy and Dysart | 51,135 | 5.5 | — | 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 £123,000, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 142nd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Band D council tax in Lochgelly 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
Lochgelly is a locality of 7,157 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.