Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
It is a town of 5,274 residents in North Ayrshire, Scotland. Council tax at Band D comes to £1,686.
Housing is within reach: a typical home costs £99,900 and rent runs £656 a month. Health outcomes fall short of most towns: men here can expect to live to 73.7, women to 79.4. Its schools fall short: school leavers’ results beat 37% of Scottish towns. 60 listed buildings, 0 of them in the top category.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · life expectancy, ONS. Dalry has no Safety Grade, because Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, and so no overall grade. The other subjects are graded below.
The 3 things Dalry 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 Dalry is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Dalry has no Safety Grade, because Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, and so no overall grade. The other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 60 buildings inside Dalry’s locality, 18 of them in the second category.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Dalry.
At the census, nearly one in ten residents said their health was bad or very bad, close to North Ayrshire’s towns (9.3%) and above Scotland’s towns (7.2%). Nearly three quarters of people in Dalry rate their own health good or very good. Disability touches 28% of the town’s population.
| Census 2022 | Dalry | North Ayrshire | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 74% | 74% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 9% | 9.3% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 28% | 29% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · Read these answers with age in mind: they aren’t adjusted, so younger places do better. The Health Grade uses age-adjusted measures, life expectancy and early deaths among them.
Below is one of its 2 schools, and why it was picked. Between them, two primaries teach 354 pupils in Dalry.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dalry Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 281 | – |
Only one of the 11 towns in North Ayrshire costs less to buy into than Dalry, whose median sale is £99,900. Renting privately is how 9% of households live. 30% live in social housing, above North Ayrshire’s towns (28%) and Scotland’s towns (24%) alike.
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; 25% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
17% of commuters walked, cycled or took the bus or train at the census, below North Ayrshire’s towns (20%) and Scotland’s towns (27%) alike. Home was the main workplace for 25% of workers at the census. About a tenth of its commuters stay in Dalry for work. Unemployment benefit claims reached 4.7% of 16 to 64s in 2026.
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 18 of them. Dalry has 60 listed buildings on Historic Environment Scotland’s list: 18 Category B. Of the town’s land, 3% lies in conservation areas, above North Ayrshire’s towns (0%) and Scotland’s towns (1%) alike.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
At 46.7, the median resident of Dalry sits in the middle of the age range. Just over a fifth of residents are 65 or over. People aged 15 to 24 make up 11% of the town, close to North Ayrshire’s towns (11%) and below Scotland’s towns (12%).
52% women, 48% men
About 91 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Dalry | North Ayrshire | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 15% | 15% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 11% | 11% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 22% | 22% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 29% | 29% | 27% |
| 65+ | 22% | 23% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 22% | 21% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 9.2% | 8.9% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 9.9% | 10% | 11% |
| Degree level | 21% | 23% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · North Ayrshire and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
60 listed buildings in Dalry.
Doggartland House including bridge, gatepiers and walled garden, and excluding courtyard buildings to north, Dalry: Photo: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith · Public domain · Courthill Fountain Dalry: Photo: Leslie Barrie · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph
10 notable people were born in Dalry.
James Dunlop: Joseph Backler, Public domain · Ben Gannon-Doak: Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Daniel Kerr: Published in above-mentioned work, which was by Benjamin F. Gue, Public domain · William Donald Patrick: Bert Röling / Nationaal Archief, CC0 · Bill Strannigan: Unknown Iowa State University, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dalry | 5,274 | — | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Kilbirnie | 7,110 | 3.5 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Kilwinning | 16,224 | 3.6 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Beith | 5,773 | 4.5 | — | A+ | — | D |
| Stevenston | 8,658 | 4.7 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Saltcoats | 12,171 | 5 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Ardrossan | 10,338 | 5.2 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| West Kilbride | 4,876 | 5.3 | — | A− | — | 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.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £99,900, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 85th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
That is 4.7 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size.
Band D council tax in Dalry is £1,686 for 2026–27, less than in 91% 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.
Town in North Ayrshire, Scotland
Dalry is a locality of 5,274 people, in the North Ayrshire 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.