How the figures for Edinburgh and the Lothians are worked out

The anchor is the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which publishes an average monthly rent by bedroom count. The figures used here are for July 2026.

Two things about Scottish rent statistics differ from the English ones used elsewhere on this site, and both change what the numbers mean. Scotland publishes average rents by Broad Rental Market Area rather than by council, and the BRMAs do not follow council boundaries — Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian all sit inside the single Lothian BRMA and share one published row. Keying the baselines to councils would have meant inventing three figures that do not exist.

The Scottish series also measures newly advertised lets, where the English series measures the whole rented stock including sitting tenancies that have not been re-let for years. New lets run ahead of the stock average, particularly in a market moving as fast as Edinburgh's, so a Scottish figure and an English one are not directly comparable even where they look alike. Nothing on this site compares them.

On top of that baseline, each area carries a reviewed premium or discount set from visible listing samples. That second step is an estimate and it is the weakest link in the chain, which is why figures are rounded to the nearest £25.

No official series publishes room-level rents, so these come from visible listing samples keyed to explicit postcode district groups. The EH prefix covers the whole of the Lothians, from the New Town out to Dunbar and Bathgate — fifty kilometres and roughly £250 a month apart — so averaging across it would describe nowhere.

Edinburgh's room market also has a seasonal shape nowhere else on this site shares: a substantial part of the city's flat stock moves to short lets for August, and rooms advertised in July and August price accordingly. These figures are an annual average and will understate a summer search.

Scottish rent statistics are published by Broad Rental Market Area rather than by council, so Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian share the single Lothian figure; and they measure newly advertised lets rather than the whole rented stock, so they sit above what a long-standing tenant is likely to be paying.

Sources: ONS Price Index of Private Rents, Broad Rental Market Area averages by bedroom count, July 2026; Rightmove, Zoopla, Citylets and SpareRoom visible listing samples across Edinburgh and the Lothians; Manual neighbourhood review for the local premium or discount against the BRMA baseline. Last reviewed 2026-09-07.

Transport for Edinburgh publishes no open routing API, so there is no journey planner to query. Every time on these pages comes from a reviewed static matrix instead: one figure for each of the 31 areas against each of the 8 destinations, 248 in total. Nothing here calls out to a live service, and nothing claims to.

The figures are typical weekday-morning door-to-door times — walking to the stop, waiting, riding, and walking off at the other end. They are not timetable times. Musselburgh to Waverley is eight minutes on the train and twenty here, because nobody lives on the platform.

Where a figure is missing the site falls back to straight-line distance at an assumed regional average speed and labels the result a distance estimate rather than a reviewed one. The speed used here is higher than for the English regions on this site, because Edinburgh's bus network genuinely is faster and denser — but it still understates the awkward journeys, and the western employment cluster is the clearest example: Portobello to Edinburgh Park is twelve kilometres and three-quarters of an hour, because the journey crosses the entire city centre to get there.

Treat a five-minute difference between two areas as noise.

Edinburgh has no zonal fare system to borrow. Lothian Buses charges a single flat fare for any journey of any length within the city, the tram prices in two bands that describe the airport rather than centrality, and ScotRail prices the Lothian lines as national rail. A flat fare is a perfectly sensible way to run a small city and a useless way to describe how far out you are, so centrality is described directly instead.

So centrality is described directly, in the terms someone moving here actually reasons in:

Central (0–1 km)

The Old Town, the New Town and Tollcross — everything inside the World Heritage boundary and its immediate edges. You walk to work and most nights out, and you pay for it in rent rather than fares.

Inner (1–3 km)

The tenement ring roughly one to three kilometres out: Leith, Marchmont, Stockbridge, Gorgie, Morningside. Fifteen to twenty-five minutes in on foot, by bus or on the tram.

Outer (3–8 km)

Three to eight kilometres out, still inside the city bypass — Portobello, Corstorphine, Granton, Liberton, Colinton, and Musselburgh just beyond the boundary. Twenty to thirty-five minutes to the centre.

Fringe (8 km+)

The Lothian towns rather than suburbs of Edinburgh: Haddington, North Berwick, Dunbar, Dalkeith, Penicuik, Livingston, Linlithgow, Bathgate. Each has its own centre and its own history, and each is thirty-five minutes or more from Waverley.

Band D charges for 2026/27 are the council tax only. Scottish Water's water and waste-water charges are collected on the same bill and add roughly £652 a year at Band D — so Edinburgh's actual Band D bill is around £2,278 rather than the £1,626 quoted here. Excluding them is the right basis for comparing one council's charge with another's, and the wrong basis for budgeting, which is why every page here says which it is showing.

There is no regional precept in these figures because there is no regional authority to levy one. Scotland has no combined authorities or regional mayors, and police and fire are funded nationally from the Scottish budget rather than through a local charge. Every pound of difference between these four councils is therefore the council's own.

The band multipliers also differ from England's. Scotland increased the multipliers for bands E to H in 2017 and England did not, so a Scottish Band H property pays about 22.5% more relative to Band D than the English statutory ninths would give. Bands A to D are unchanged. The band tables on these pages use the Scottish ratios accordingly.

These figures are council tax only. Scottish Water's water and waste-water charges are collected on the same bill and add roughly £652 a year at Band D — so budget for the bill rather than the charge.

Bands are still based on what a property was worth on 1 April 1991, and the Scottish 1991 value ranges differ from the English ones. Since 2017 the multipliers for bands E to H have also been higher in Scotland; bands A to D are unchanged.

There is no police or fire precept in these figures because both are funded nationally from the Scottish budget rather than through a local charge.

Every other band is derived exactly from Band D using the statutory ratios, which do not vary by authority. Band D is a reference point, not a typical charge — that is the most common way these figures get misread.

Sources: Published 2026/27 Band D comparison tables for Scottish councils, cross-checked across two independent sources; Scottish Water published household charges for 2026/27; Council Tax (Substitution of Proportion) (Scotland) Order 2016 for the band E to H multipliers. These are secondary sources: confirm any charge that matters to your own budget with the authority itself. Last reviewed 2026-09-07.

Each area carries 10 scores from 0 to 10: lively, green space, nightlife, café density, gym density, walkability, food scene, young professionals, safety, transport. They are comparable between the areas covered here and nowhere else: a 7 for nightlife means seventh-decile among these 31 areas, not on any absolute scale.

These are editorial judgements, informed by transport data, published crime and deprivation statistics and local knowledge. They are not survey results and they are not derived from a formula.