BurnfootScottish Borders
Council tax at Band D comes to £1,619. 2,797 people live in this town in Scottish Borders, Scotland.
Is Burnfoot a good place to live?
Homes are affordable: a typical home costs £53,600 and rent runs £760 a month. Add walkability to its strengths: 32% of commuters walk, cycle or take public transport. Health lags: life expectancy is 76.5 for men and 76.1 for women. It lags on schools as well — school leavers’ results beat just over a tenth of Scottish towns.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · commuting, Census 2022 · life expectancy, ONS. Burnfoot has no Safety Grade, because Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, and so no overall grade. Its other subjects still get grades, below.
What makes Burnfoot stand out
The 3 things Burnfoot does most differently from other towns.
How Burnfoot grades
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Burnfoot is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Burnfoot has no Safety Grade, because Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, and so no overall grade. Its other subjects still get grades, below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
The data
Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Burnfoot.
Children make up 22% of Burnfoot, above Scottish Borders’ towns and Scotland’s towns
Half the people of Burnfoot are older than 38.5. Retirement age and beyond: 16% of residents are 65 or older. 13% of residents are 15 to 24, above Scottish Borders’ towns (10%) and Scotland’s towns (12%) alike.
Ages · share of residents
Qualifications · residents 16 and older
Women and men · all residents
53% women, 47% men
About 89 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Burnfoot | Scottish Borders | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 22% | 15% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 13% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 23% | 21% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 27% | 28% | 27% |
| 65+ | 16% | 26% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 32% | 20% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 7.8% | 9.3% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 9.5% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 12% | 26% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Scottish Borders and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
On exam results, Burnfoot’s schools trail 89% of Scottish towns
Its one school is below. The town’s primary school has 162 pupils.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burnfoot Community SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 162 | – |
Life expectancy in Burnfoot is shorter than in 95% of UK towns
Poor health, by residents’ own account, affects 9.3% of the town. At the census, 73% of people in Burnfoot called their health good or very good, below both Scottish Borders’ towns (78%) and Scotland’s towns (78%). 29% of residents in Burnfoot live with a disability.
| Census 2022 | Burnfoot | Scottish Borders | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 73% | 78% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 9.3% | 6.4% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 29% | 25% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · 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.
More households in Burnfoot live in social housing than in Scottish Borders’ towns or Scotland’s towns: 60%
7% rent privately, lower than both Scottish Borders’ towns (12%) and Scotland’s towns (13%). Households that own their home make up 32%. Burnfoot is the cheapest of the 11 towns in Scottish Borders: its median sale is £53,600.
Median sale price · 2023 to 2025, at early-2025 prices
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.
5.7% of 16 to 64s in Burnfoot claim unemployment benefits, more than in both Scottish Borders’ towns and Scotland’s towns
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 24% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
58% of commuters travelled under 5 km to work. Work in town: 14% of resident commuters. Jobs per working resident: 0.8. Working mainly from home: nearly a quarter of workers, below both Scottish Borders’ towns (28%) and Scotland’s towns (31%).
How commuters got to work · March 2022
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
No listed buildings in Burnfoot
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Historic Environment Scotland’s list has no building inside Burnfoot’s locality.
Listed buildings by grade · Historic Environment Scotland
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
The Borders Distillery and 3 more in and around Burnfoot
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Burnfoot. Best known first.
MuseumBorders Textile Towerhouse1.1 km outside town, to the southwestMuseumMuseumHawick Museum1.7 km outside town, to the southwestCastleCastleGoldielands Tower3.8 km outside town, to the southwestPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
Photo credits (1)
- Borders Textile Towerhouse: Victuallers, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Everything we know about Burnfoot
Burnfoot’s neighbours
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burnfoot | 2,797 | — | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Hawick | 10,715 | 0.9 | — | A+ | — | C− |
| Selkirk | 4,669 | 8.3 | — | A+ | — | C− |
| Jedburgh | 4,131 | 9.2 | — | 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.
Questions about Burnfoot
Is Burnfoot expensive to live in?
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £53,600, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 39th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Are schools in Burnfoot good?
One state school is inside the town; places are handled by the local council.
Does Burnfoot flood?
Surface water isn’t included. Check a specific address on GOV.UK’s flood risk service.
About Burnfoot
Town in Scottish Borders, Scotland
Burnfoot is a locality of 2,797 people, in the Scottish Borders 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
- Population
- 2,797 (Census 2022)
- Council
- Scottish Borders
- Nation
- Scotland
- Area
- 0.5 sq mi (1.2 km²)
- NRS code
- S52000105
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.