Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
It is a town of 6,714 residents in Shetland Islands, Scotland.
Housing is within reach: a typical home costs £188,600 and rent runs £816 a month. Its lowest grade is for health: men here can expect to live to 77.9, women to 84.1. Its listed buildings number 101, with 2 at Category A. A Band D home pays £1,488 in council tax.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · life expectancy, ONS. Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Lerwick has no Safety Grade, and so no overall grade. Every other subject still has a grade below.
The 3 things Lerwick 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 Lerwick is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Lerwick has no Safety Grade, and so no overall grade. Every other subject still has a grade below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 101 buildings inside Lerwick’s locality, 2 of them in the top category, and 5 scheduled monuments.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Lerwick.
8% rent privately, about level with Shetland Islands’ towns (8%) and below Scotland’s towns (13%). No town in Shetland Islands costs more to buy into than Lerwick, at £188,600, the highest of 1. Social renters account for just over a third of households.
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.
Below are two of its 3 schools, each with why it was picked. Anderson High School’s results beat 83% of schools in Scotland like it. Between them, two primaries and one secondary teach 1,446 pupils in Lerwick.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bell's Brae Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 259 | – |
| Anderson High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 974 | A− |
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.
About 76% of its commuters stay in Lerwick for work. 79% of commuters travelled under 5 km to work. Working mainly from home: nearly a quarter of workers, near Shetland Islands’ towns (24%) and lower than Scotland’s towns (31%). Also worth knowing: the 2026 claimant rate among 16 to 64s was 1.9%.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
Women here live to 84.1 on average and men to 77.9 (2020–24).
| Census 2022 | Lerwick | Shetland Islands | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 79% | 79% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 6% | 6% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 24% | 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.
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Conservation areas cover 6% of Lerwick’s land, higher than Scotland’s towns (1%). The top grade, Category A, goes to 2 of them. 5 scheduled monuments lie here.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Residents of Lerwick have a median age of 43.7. People 65 and over make up 22% of the town, near Shetland Islands’ towns (22%) and higher than Scotland’s towns (19%). 28% of adults hold a degree.
50% women, 50% men
About an even split. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Lerwick | Shetland Islands | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 14% | 14% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 12% | 12% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 25% | 25% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 27% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 22% | 22% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 16% | 16% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 11% | 11% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 11% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 28% | 28% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Shetland Islands and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Lerwick. Best known first.
FortFort Charlottein town
MuseumShetland Museum and Archivesin town
CastleScalloway Castle4.8 km outside town, to the westMuseumMuseumShetland Textile Museumin townMuseumMuseumScalloway Museum4.8 km outside town, to the westMuseumMuseumBressay Heritage Centre900 m outside town, to the eastPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
101 listed buildings in Lerwick, 2 of them in the top category.
Clickimin Broch,broch and settlement: Photo: David Stanley · CC BY 2.0 · 24-30 (Even Nos) Commercial Street, Queen's Hotel, And 2 Church Lane, Lifeboat Station, Including Sea Walls: Photo: John Ferguson · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Twageos Road, Anderson High School (Formerly Anderson Institute), Including Wings, Boundary Walls, Railing, And Gatepiers: Photo: Sonictiller · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Hillhead and Church Road, St Olaf's Hall (Formerly St Olaf's Church): Photo: Virtual-Pano · CC BY-SA 4.0
19 notable people were born in Lerwick.
Norman Lamont: Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0 · Ian Bairnson: Hans-W. Schultze, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Robert Stout: Stanley Polkinghorne Andrew, Public domain · Aly Bain: Bryan Ledgard, CC BY 2.0 · Arthur Anderson: op unknown, Public domain
That is 6.2 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size.
Band D council tax in Lerwick is £1,488 for 2026–27, less than in 99% of UK towns (council, county, police and fire). Your own bill depends on your home’s band; check it on GOV.UK.
GCSE results beat 87% of towns in England (Department for Education, Attainment 8). Lerwick 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 £188,600, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 58th most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Town in Shetland Islands, Scotland
Lerwick is a locality of 6,714 people, in the Shetland Islands 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.