Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A town of 14,550 in South Ayrshire, Scotland. Band D council tax is £1,695.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Prestwick has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below. Its strongest subject is cost of living (A+): the 42nd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns: median sale £195,000, 4.4 years of area income; rent £656 a month. Its weakest is hazard risk (D): 5.4% of homes at high or medium risk of flooding from rivers or the sea.
The 3 things Prestwick 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 Prestwick is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Prestwick has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 11 buildings inside Prestwick’s locality, 2 of them in the top category, and 1 scheduled monument.
The archive holds 1 old photo or postcard going back to 1944.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Prestwick.
For Prestwick, that is above both South Ayrshire’s towns (69%) and Scotland’s towns (60%). 11% of households live in social housing. Prestwick is the second most expensive of the 6 towns in South Ayrshire, at £195,000.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL
Two of its 5 schools are below, each with why it’s listed. The grade uses the secondaries its children go to; Scotland publishes no primary results by school.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heathfield Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 435 | – |
| Prestwick AcademyLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,126 | B |
Prestwick sits above both South Ayrshire’s towns (27%) and Scotland’s towns (19%) on this measure. Children are 12% of the town. The median resident of Prestwick is 53.1 years old.
53% women, 47% men
About 89 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women. Women live longer than men, so towns with many older residents have more women.
| Prestwick | South Ayrshire | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 12% | 14% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 8.7% | 9.7% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 18% | 20% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 31% | 29% | 27% |
| 65+ | 29% | 27% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 16% | 18% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 8.4% | 8% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 12% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 33% | 31% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · South Ayrshire and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Women here live to 82.4 on average and men to 78.3 (2020–24). Of the 6 towns in South Ayrshire, Prestwick has the second-smallest share in bad or very bad health: 6.8%. 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.
| Census 2022 | Prestwick | South Ayrshire | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 79% | 76% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 6.8% | 7.7% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 25% | 27% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 31% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
That puts Prestwick below both South Ayrshire’s towns (3.9%) and Scotland’s towns (2.8%). At the census, 18% of commuters walked, cycled or took the bus or train.
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.
Prestwick has 11 listed buildings inside its locality on Historic Environment Scotland’s list: 2 Category A, 6 Category B.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Prestwick. Best known first.
CathedralAyr Cathedral2.1 km outside town, to the south
CathedralGood Shepherd Cathedral, Ayr900 m outside town, to the south
CastleSundrum Castle4.9 km outside town, to the southeastArt galleryArt galleryMaclaurin Art Gallery5 km outside town, to the southPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
11 listed buildings in Prestwick, 2 of them in the top category.
Mercat Cross.: Photo: Mary and Angus Hogg · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Prestwick, Old Parish Church: Photo: David Edgar · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Shaw Monument: Photo: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Kingcase, Bruce`S Well and Ruins of St Ninian`S Hospital: Photo: Mary and Angus Hogg · CC BY-SA 2.0
22 notable people were born in Prestwick.
James Forrest: Ailura, CC BY-SA 3.0 at · Jenny Colgan: Jindřich Nosek (NoJin), CC BY 4.0 · Lewis Gibson: Phantom Kabocha, CC BY 4.0
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prestwick | 14,550 | — | — | A+ | — | C− |
| Ayr | 46,209 | 2.6 | — | A+ | — | D |
| Troon | 15,271 | 4.4 | — | A+ | — | C |
| Dundonald | 2,579 | 5.9 | — | A | — | C− |
| Drongan | 3,063 | 6.9 | — | A+ | — | D |
| Dreghorn | 3,362 | 8 | — | A+ | — | D |
| Crosshouse | 2,609 | 8.7 | — | A+ | — | D− |
| Mauchline | 3,809 | 9.1 | — | 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.
Surface water isn’t included. Check a specific address on GOV.UK’s flood risk service.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £195,000, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 42nd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Town in South Ayrshire, Scotland
Prestwick is a locality of 14,550 people, in the South 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.