Stonehaven
Town · 10,761 residents
65Good
Good · better than 8 in 10 towns
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 64% of residents live within five minutes of a park
- Safety scores 76, 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 55% of the area
- Transport scores 31, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Stonehaven
Map outline: Official settlement boundary (National Records of Scotland)
Is Stonehaven a good place to live?
Stonehaven scores 65/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (78) and safety (76).
It scores lowest on transport (31).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Stonehaven in Scotland, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Stonehaven
Stonehaven's high street runs down to a working harbour, stone-built and grey-gold, with the kind of solid Victorian terraces that suggest a town built to last rather than to impress. The people you see about are older on average than you'd find in most of Scotland, and the pace matches: this isn't a place in a hurry to become anywhere else.
The numbers back up that impression of a settled, comfortable town rather than a striving one. On the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, Stonehaven sits in the eighth decile — among the less deprived places in the country — and a median house price a little under £200,000 buys considerably more house here than the same money would in Aberdeen proper, a few miles up the coast. Prices have barely moved in the past year, essentially flat, which suits anyone buying to live rather than to speculate. Council tax at Band D is close to the national norm, so there's no nasty local surcharge to factor in. Full-fibre broadband reaches under half of homes, which is worth knowing if you work from home and need a serious connection — the coverage here still has some catching up to do.
What stands out most, though, is the safety and environment picture: both graded well above the Scottish average, with the safety trend holding steady rather than drifting either way. That's unusual enough to be the real headline, more than the price or the population figures. Green space is genuinely part of daily life here rather than a line in a brochure — forty-odd sites covering a reasonable slice of the town, enough that a walk along the clifftop path or down to the harbour is a routine, not an outing. Health outcomes score well too, and the nightlife and housing grades both land in solidly respectable territory rather than anything showstopping. Connectivity is the one area that lags the rest of the pattern, a reminder that being on the coast has its trade-offs. With five schools serving a town this size, families have reasonable local options, though this is a place better suited to those who've already done their travelling than to anyone chasing a fast commute.