Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Band D council tax is £1,468. 2,751 people call this town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland home.
Homes are affordable (A): the median home sold for £222,700, 4.8 years of area income. School results are strong: school leavers’ results beat 82% of Scottish towns. Hazards are a real consideration: 2.9% of homes face a high or medium risk of river or sea flooding. 100 listed buildings, 5 of them in the top category.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry, the last three years · flood risk, SEPA. Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Biggar has no Safety Grade, and so no overall grade. Every other subject still has a grade below.
The 3 things Biggar 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 Biggar is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Without street-level crime figures from Police Scotland, Biggar 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 100 buildings inside Biggar’s locality, 5 of them in the top category, and 1 scheduled monument.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Biggar.
Private renters make up 13% of households, higher than South Lanarkshire’s towns (10%) yet lower than Scotland’s towns (13%). 14% of households live in social housing. Behind the median of £222,700: 172 sales in Biggar’s data zones, 2023 to 2025.
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.
Some 826 pupils attend Biggar’s one primary and one secondary. Biggar High School’s results beat 78% of schools in Scotland like it. Both of the town’s schools appear below.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biggar Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 206 | – |
| Biggar High SchoolLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 620 | A− |
Degrees are held by 38% of adults. People aged 15 to 24 make up 7.9% of the town, lower than both South Lanarkshire’s towns (10%) and Scotland’s towns (12%). Half of Biggar is older than 51.2, half younger.
53% women, 47% men
About 88 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.
| Biggar | South Lanarkshire | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 7.9% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 19% | 25% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 31% | 28% | 27% |
| 65+ | 28% | 20% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 15% | 18% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 7.8% | 8.4% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 10% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 38% | 28% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · South Lanarkshire and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 28% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
24% of commuters walked, cycled or took the bus or train at the census, between South Lanarkshire’s towns (18%) and Scotland’s towns (27%). Jobs per working resident: 0.7. Also worth knowing: the car carried nearly three quarters of commuters at the census.
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.
For its size, Biggar has more listed buildings than any other town in South Lanarkshire. The town’s listed buildings include Biggar Gasworks, Category A. At the top of the list, 5 are Category A and 37 Category B.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
Asked at the census, four in five residents of Biggar said they were in good or very good health. Nearly a quarter of residents have a disability, below both South Lanarkshire’s towns (25%) and Scotland’s towns (24%). Men in Biggar can expect to live to 81.5, women to 83.3 (2020–24).
| Census 2022 | Biggar | South Lanarkshire | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 80% | 77% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 4.5% | 7.9% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 23% | 25% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL · A young population flatters these answers, which are not age-adjusted; the Health Grade instead uses measures that allow for age, such as life expectancy and early deaths.
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Biggar. Best known first.
MuseumBiggar Gasworks Museumin town
CastleBoghall Castle200 m outside town, to the south
Castle · Historic Environment ScotlandCoulter Motte1.5 km outside town, to the southwestMuseumMuseumBiggar and Upper Clydesdale Museumin townPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
100 listed buildings in Biggar, 5 of them in the top category.
St Mary's Church Kirkstyle: Photo: Anne Burgess · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Biggar Gasworks: Photo: Jim Barton · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Geograph
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
That is 14.9 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size. Its Category A buildings include Biggar Gasworks. It also has 1 scheduled monument.
Band D council tax in Biggar is £1,468 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.
An older town. More households own their home than across Scotland’s towns: 70%, against 60%.
GCSE results beat 82% of towns in England (Department for Education, Attainment 8). Biggar has 2 state schools; places are handled by the local council.
Town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland
Biggar is a locality of 2,751 people, in the South Lanarkshire 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.
