Best council in Scotland: all 32 ranked
East Renfrewshire comes first in our new ranking of all 32 Scottish councils. East Lothian is second and Edinburgh third. But the list and resident survey tell a more surprising story.
By Graeme · Published 16 August 2026 · 14 min read
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The best council in Scotland is East Renfrewshire, on our 2026 ranking of all 32 Scottish councils built from 53 official figures. It is number one for services and results and stayed first in all ten extra checks. East Lothian is second. Edinburgh is third.
But there is no single meaning of "best". Shetland's residents rate their council highest. North Ayrshire is best for how the council is run and comes first in our separate council landlord list. Inverclyde jumps from 12th to third when it is compared with councils facing similar problems.
Best council in Scotland: the answer in four numbers
#1
East Renfrewshire
68.6 comparison score · #1 for services and results
94.5%
stayed in the top five
when we changed the rules 10,000 sensible ways
53
official figures checked
put into 29 topics so no one service can take over the score
32
councils compared
with a like for like rank and usual rank range for every one
What first place really means
East Renfrewshire did best across the official figures we checked. This is not a government award. It does not mean every service is excellent. And 68.6 is a comparison score, not 68.6% of perfect.
Our main ranking
The top ten councils
- 168.6
- 260.8
- 358.5
- 458.0
- 557.9
- 656.5
- 755.5
- 855.3
- 953.8
- 1053.7
Why East Renfrewshire comes first
It does well across the board. East Renfrewshire is first for services and results. It is fourth for what residents said, second for value for money and fourth for the council's own emissions. Its weak spot is how the council is run, where it ranks only 24th.
That weak spot matters. Hiding it would turn a useful finding into an advert. East Renfrewshire's lead is big enough to survive it. But 24th place still tells residents where to start asking questions.
East Renfrewshire
Why it finished first
Does East Renfrewshire still win if we change the rules?
No ranking is perfect. We had to decide how much each part should count and how to turn very different figures into one score. So we changed those choices 10,000 sensible ways and ran the ranking again.
How solid is the result?
We changed the rules 10,000 sensible ways
The line shows where each council finished in the middle 90% of those reruns. A short line means its place barely moved. A long line means the result depends more on the choices we made.
East Renfrewshire has the strongest claim to first place. The next four are more of a leading pack. South Ayrshire is fifth in our main list, but usually finished third and made the top five in 93.0% of the reruns. East Lothian made the top five in 91.5%.
Scottish council rankings: all 32 councils
Choose what you want to see: all councils, councils facing similar conditions, or what residents said. Search for your council or open its full page. The usual rank range is more honest than pretending one exact place tells the whole story.
Explore all 32 councils
See how the list changes
Our main ranking of all 32 councils. It combines what residents said, service results, how the council is run, value for money and the council's own emissions.
- 1East Renfrewshireusually ranks 1–668.6score
- 2East Lothianusually ranks 2–660.8score
- 3City of Edinburghusually ranks 2–858.5score
- 4East Dunbartonshireusually ranks 2–1258.0score
- 5South Ayrshireusually ranks 1–657.9score
- 6Perth and Kinrossusually ranks 4–1156.5score
- 7Shetland Islandsusually ranks 5–2955.5score
- 8Stirlingusually ranks 3–1655.3score
- 9Angususually ranks 8–2453.8score
- 10Orkney Islandsusually ranks 9–3253.7score
| # | Council | Score | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | East Renfrewshire | 68.6 | usually ranks 1–6 |
| 2 | East Lothian | 60.8 | usually ranks 2–6 |
| 3 | City of Edinburgh | 58.5 | usually ranks 2–8 |
| 4 | East Dunbartonshire | 58.0 | usually ranks 2–12 |
| 5 | South Ayrshire | 57.9 | usually ranks 1–6 |
| 6 | Perth and Kinross | 56.5 | usually ranks 4–11 |
| 7 | Shetland Islands | 55.5 | usually ranks 5–29 |
| 8 | Stirling | 55.3 | usually ranks 3–16 |
| 9 | Angus | 53.8 | usually ranks 8–24 |
| 10 | Orkney Islands | 53.7 | usually ranks 9–32 |
The scores compare councils with each other. They are not percentages, pass marks or official grades. The usual rank range shows where each council landed in the middle 90% of 10,000 reruns. The survey base is the number of people who answered locally.
How Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee compare
Edinburgh is the only one of Scotland's four big cities in the top ten. Aberdeen is 26th, Glasgow 29th and Dundee last. The column compares each city with councils facing similar conditions, so it is worth reading beside the main rank.
The four city councils
Where the cities rank out of 32
| Council | Main rank | Usual range | Like for like rank | Residents' survey rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Edinburgh | 3 | 2 to 8 | 5 | 12 |
| Aberdeen City | 26 | 22 to 31 | 32 | 32 |
| Glasgow City | 29 | 23 to 31 | 27 | 31 |
| Dundee City | 32 | 30 to 32 | 30 | 18 |
For the money side of each city, see Glasgow council tax bands, Edinburgh council tax bands, Aberdeen council tax bands and Dundee council tax bands. For Glasgow, the crime rate, life expectancy and why poverty is worse in Glasgow pages give the wider picture.
There is more than one kind of good council
Services and results count most in our main score. What residents and service users said comes next. We also count how the council is run, value for money and its own emissions. Looking at each part stops one final rank from hiding the real story.
What residents said · 25%
Shetland Islands92.9
Services and results · 40%
East Renfrewshire83.7
How the council is run · 20%
North Ayrshire67.2
Value for money · 10%
East Lothian61.6
Council emissions · 5%
East Lothian95.2
East Lothian wins twice: it is first for value for money and council emissions. North Ayrshire's result is just as striking. It comes first for how the council is run. That covers its staff, paying bills, planning decisions, public buildings and keeping spending close to budget. It does not reward the area for being richer.
Who does well against councils like them?
Councils do not all face the same job. The list compares each one with an official group facing similar poverty levels, population and rural challenges. East Renfrewshire and East Lothian stay first and second. Inverclyde jumps from 12th to third.
All councils → similar councils
What changes in a fairer match up?
This is where easy assumptions fall apart. West Dunbartonshire and North Ayrshire also jump up the list. Perth and Kinross falls from sixth to 21st. East Dunbartonshire falls from fourth to 12th. The list is not the one "true" answer. It shows how much the choice of comparison matters.
Residents do not always agree with the figures
Shetland comes first for what residents said in our main score. It also wins the separate five question survey list. Its average is 52.1% across questions about good services, value for money, action, influence and respectful treatment. Perth and Kinross is second at 45.5%.
East Renfrewshire is only eighth in that survey list, even though it wins overall. The two lists only partly match. Official figures miss things people feel every day, such as trust, tone and how easy it is to get help. And with only a few hundred answers in each area, small gaps may be down to chance.
#1
Shetland Islands
what residents said
main rank #7
#1
East Renfrewshire
main ranking
resident survey rank #8
#1
North Ayrshire
how the council is run
resident survey rank #15
Do not make too much of tiny survey gaps
Between roughly 200 and 870 people answered in each council area. A one or two point gap may be chance. We show the published figures and the number of people who answered. We do not pretend every tiny gap is real.
The result that needs its own investigation
North Ayrshire is first for how the council is run. It is also first among the 26 councils that still own enough homes to compare fairly. Yet only 87% of surveyed residents said their neighbourhood was a good place to live, the lowest figure in Scotland. And 33% reported loneliness, the highest.
Both things can be true. A council can run parts of its own operation well while people in the area still struggle. Poverty, housing, health, transport, national policy and decades of lost jobs all shape daily life. Any honest "best council" story has to show both sides.
North Ayrshire's contradiction
#1
how the council is run
#1
council landlord, 26 eligible
87%
say their neighbourhood is a good place to live
33%
report loneliness
What we did not use to judge councils
Child poverty, crime, drug deaths, life expectancy, loneliness, housing, budget gaps and Crisis Grant decisions all matter. But they do not all show what the council itself did. Putting them into the score would reward councils simply for serving richer or healthier areas.
- Poverty and health are shown beside the result as facts about the area. They do not add or remove points.
- Budget gaps are kept out because councils count and close them in different ways.
- Crisis Grant award rates stay separate because national figures do not show who applied or why each claim was refused.
- Watchdog finding counts are kept out because councils are checked at different times and in different depth.
- Council landlord results have their own 26-council table because six councils do not own comparable housing stock.
This also protects councils serving harder places. Dundee comes last in our main ranking. That does not mean Dundee is Scotland's worst place to live. It does not mean the council caused the city's poverty or health problems. It means Dundee had the weakest overall result in the latest council figures we could compare fairly.
The area figures we kept out of the score are on every council profile. For the wider story, see poverty in Scotland and the causes of poverty.
How we worked it out
The official council data published in July 2026 has 109 measures. We used the 53 that can fairly compare performance across councils. We put similar figures into 29 topics, then used those topics to build the five parts of the score. This stops schools or surveys taking over simply because more figures are published about them.
The rules we published
What counts, and how much
What residents said
25%
Services and results
40%
How the council is run
20%
Value for money
10%
Council emissions
5%
Costs never win on their own
We matched every cost with a result. Cheap bin collection with poor recycling does not count as good value. Great results bought at a very high price do not either. Value for money is only 10% of the final score. Remote areas and different local needs can push costs up.
Missing data is not failure
If the official source had no figure, we gave the council the middle score of 50, not zero. We also show how much data was available. East Renfrewshire had 98.2%. A total of 24 councils had every figure. Moray had the least, at 93.0%.
We show the year for every figure
Most figures are for 2024/25. The latest adult care and road figures are for 2025/26. Some satisfaction figures combine more than one year of survey answers. The download shows the date beside every number.
See all 29 groups of figures
What residents said · 25%
- Satisfaction with local schools
- Satisfaction with culture and leisure
- Satisfaction with bins and street cleaning
- Adult care users' and carers' experience
Services and results · 40%
- Positive destinations after school
- Primary literacy and numeracy
- Attainment gaps
- Early years quality
- Attendance and exclusions
- Stability for looked after children
- Street cleanliness
- Road condition
- Recycling
- Adult care quality
- Readmissions and delayed discharge
How the council is run · 20%
- Council gender pay gap
- Staff sickness absence
- Council tax collection and invoice payment
- Planning speed
- Condition and suitability of council buildings
- Spending close to budget
Value for money · 10%
- Waste
- Street cleaning
- Roads
- Schools
- Culture and leisure
- Planning
- Adult care
Council emissions · 5%
- Council transport and electricity emissions
Why no secret formula
It would be easy to rig a ranking by changing the rules after seeing the winner. We published every rule, every weight, what we left out and what we did when a figure was missing. You can disagree with our choices without having to guess what they were.
Check every number
We have published far more than the final list. You can download every score, every official figure, its year, the source files and the result of all 10,000 reruns. Journalists can also download the poverty, crime, housing, budget and Crisis Grant figures that we kept out of the score.
Most council service figures come from the Improvement Service. What residents said comes from the Scottish Household Survey. Housing, crime, poverty, drug deaths and Crisis Grant figures keep their own official sources, all linked below.
For teachers and pupils
Because every rule and weight is published, this ranking works well for practising how to judge a source: who made it, what it counts, what it leaves out and how much the result moves when the rules change. The Modern Studies resources page links it with the rest of the site's evidence.
What councils now need to answer
The list matters only if it leads to answers. Councils near the top should explain what they are doing better, not just celebrate. Councils near the bottom should say what they can fix and what they cannot control.
- Why is East Renfrewshire first for services and results but only 24th for how the council is run?
- What is Inverclyde doing that lifts it to third against similar councils?
- Why does North Ayrshire run its council and housing so well while getting Scotland's weakest neighbourhood rating?
- Why do Shetland's residents rate their council highest when it ranks 29th for value and last for council emissions?
- Which services place Dundee at the bottom, and what changed after the latest reporting period?
You can put these questions to the people who answer for your council. Find them with who is my local councillor by postcode, or ask your MSP through who is my MSP.
Scotland Counted will publish any serious council response beside these findings. We will correct any number that does not match the official source. We may add new figures next time, but we will not quietly change the rules to get a neater headline.
See what your own council does
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