Dunfermline
City · 56,505 residents
61Good
Good · better than 6 in 10 cities
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 61% of residents live within five minutes of a park
- Property market scores 70, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Road noise reaches 53% of the area
- Transport scores 31, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Dunfermline
Map outline: Official settlement boundary (National Records of Scotland)
Is Dunfermline a good place to live?
Dunfermline scores 61/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (72) and property market (70).
It scores lowest on transport (31).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Dunfermline in Scotland, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Dunfermline
Dunfermline reads as a working town that's quietly filled out into a small city — old stone high street giving way to newer estates on the edges, the kind of place where the Abbey and the retail park exist within the same postcode without much fuss. It doesn't feel like a commuter dormitory or a museum piece; it feels like somewhere people actually settled and stayed, which the median age of 42 backs up more than it explains.
The housing picture is the clearest signal of who's here and why. A median house price around £175,000 sits well under what you'd pay across much of Scotland's central belt, and prices have been drifting upward gently rather than sharply — the kind of "improving" trend that rewards patience rather than speculation. Council tax band D bills undercut both the regional and national medians, which matters more in daily terms than the headline price does. With seventeen schools serving a population of this size, and a settled, middle-aged demographic rather than a churn of renters, this reads as a place families buy into and don't rush to leave.
Green space is where Dunfermline quietly overperforms — 159 sites totalling nearly 245 hectares is a generous ratio for a city with this population density, and it shows in how the place is used: dog walks, pram routes, the low-key rhythm of a town that doesn't need a destination park because it has dozens of smaller ones stitched through it. Full-fibre broadband reaching close to 68% of properties suggests the newer developments are wired for people working from home as much as commuting out, and the overall grading — comfortably into B+ territory on housing, environment and connectivity, with safety flat rather than declining — paints a place that's solid without being flashy. Health services grade a notch lower than the rest, which is worth knowing rather than worrying over; it's the one area where the pattern breaks from an otherwise consistent story.