Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
In Highland, Scotland, this town has 3,801 residents. Council tax at Band D comes to £1,634.
Homes are affordable (A+): the median home sold for £130,400, 2.9 years of area income. Add walkability to its strengths — 20% of commuters get to work on foot, by bike or by public transport. School results trail most towns: school leavers’ results beat 1% of Scottish towns. Residents’ health trails most towns (D): life expectancy 76.8 for men, 79.3 for women.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · commuting, Census 2022 · life expectancy, ONS. Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Invergordon has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Every other subject still has a grade below.
The 3 things Invergordon 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 Invergordon is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Invergordon has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Every other subject still has a grade below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 16 buildings inside Invergordon’s locality, 13 of them in the second category.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Invergordon.
Just over a fifth of residents are 65 or over. People aged 15 to 24 make up just over a tenth of the town, near Highland’s towns (10%) and lower than Scotland’s towns (12%). Typical age in Invergordon: 44.3, the median.
50% women, 50% men
About an even split. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Invergordon | Highland | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 11% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 24% | 25% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 28% | 28% | 27% |
| 65+ | 21% | 21% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 23% | 18% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 11% | 8.7% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 12% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 17% | 27% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Highland and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Below are two of its 3 schools, each with why it was picked. Invergordon’s two primaries and one secondary have 567 pupils between them.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Lodge Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 150 | – |
| Invergordon AcademyLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 310 | D− |
37% of households rent from a council or housing body. Owners make up 52% of households, below Highland’s towns (61%) and Scotland’s towns (60%) alike. Private rents average £816 a month across the Highland and Islands 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.
73% of people in Invergordon rate their own health good or very good. Of the 16 towns in Highland, Invergordon has the largest share in bad or very bad health: 8.8%. On top of that, a disability affects 30% of people in the town.
| Census 2022 | Invergordon | Highland | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 73% | 79% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 8.8% | 6.6% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 30% | 24% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · Because the census answers ignore age, a younger population lifts them; that is why the Health Grade is built on age-adjusted measures like life expectancy and early deaths.
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 22% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
Invergordon counts 1.2 jobs per working resident. Of the commuters living here, 26% work in the town itself. 78% of commuters took the car to work at the census. Short trips to work, under 5 km: 43%, about level with Scotland’s towns (44%) and below Highland’s towns (64%).
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.
Category B covers 13 of them. Listed buildings per head: 42 for every 10,000 residents of Invergordon.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Invergordon. Best known first.
5 notable people were born in Invergordon.
Tom Stoltman: James English, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invergordon | 3,801 | — | — | A+ | — | D |
| Alness | 5,940 | 3.1 | — | A | — | D− |
| Tain | 3,544 | 9.2 | — | A+ | — | D |
| Dingwall | 5,274 | 11 | — | 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.
GCSE results trail 99% of towns in England (Department for Education, Attainment 8). Invergordon has 3 state schools; places are handled by the local council.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £130,400, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 114th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Band D council tax in Invergordon is £1,634 for 2026–27, less than in 93% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
Town in Highland, Scotland
Invergordon is a locality of 3,801 people, in the Highland 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.