Adults with a full driving licence
70.8%
People aged 17+ · Scottish Household Survey 2024
Source sample: 9620 people. See age groups and source note 39 below.
Scottish Transport Statistics · published March 2026
Access to driving in Scotland.
Understand the wider context behind learning to drive: licence holding, access to a car, and accessible local travel. Compare national survey groups and explore figures for every Scottish council.
Households without a car or van
27.4%
Scottish Household Survey 2024
Source sample: 10470 households. Access for private use, including a vehicle someone else owns.
Council travel profiles
32
Blue Badges and licensed accessible taxis · 2025
Explore your councilHow to use these figures
Learning to drive
Compare the cost of lessons with access to a practice car, insurance and travel to your test. Survey percentages describe groups; your learning plan depends on your own circumstances.
Build a learning budgetFinding accessible travel
Use council figures as background, then confirm the vehicle, wheelchair space, assistance and timing directly. A licensed accessible vehicle may already be booked.
Assessment and adapted drivingPlanning instructor services
Use age, income and rural context to ask better questions about collection points, lesson formats and transport barriers. These statistics do not establish demand or predict earnings.
Instructor business resourcesCouncil searches apply to council tables; survey groups describe Scotland as a whole. Age bands, denominators and sample sizes must stay with each percentage. “[small sample]” and “[unavailable]” are not zero.
Blue Badges on issue by council
31 March 2025 · Badges, population and rate per 1,000 people
Source: Scottish Government - Not Accredited Official Statistics
| Council | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 [note 53] | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Badges on issue as at 31st March 2025 - Organisat-ions | Badges on issue as at 31st March 2025 -Individuals - Automatic [note 45] | Badges on issue as at 31st March 2025 -Individuals - Discretionary [note 46] | Population 2024 | Rate per 1000 population |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glasgow, City of [note 46] | 23917 | 28668 | 29522 | 24761 | 27317 | 23692 | 19350 | 21784 | 21642 | 21161 | 21627 | 21531 | 23417 | 21843 | 23115 | 27255 | 31873 | 33111 | 281 | 16651 | 16179 | 631970 | 52.39330980900992 |
Original table notes and definitions
Note 43: Blue Badges for display on motor vehicles used by disabled persons were introduced on 1 April 2000.
Note 44: Totals relate to the number of badges on issue as at 31st March that year. Data prior to 2008 not available.
Note 45: The automatic category includes badges issued to individuals in receipt of the higher rate mobility component of Disability Living Allowance, certain levels of Personal Independence Payment, a War Pensioners' Mobility Supplement, a lump sum (tariffs 1-8) of blind people. (Not subject to further assessment.)the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, or to blind or registered blind people. (Not subject to further assessment.)
Note 46: Badges issued in the discretionary category to people with a substantial permanent or temporary disability who are unable or virtually unable to walk or pose a risk to themselvesor others in traffic or who have difficulty using parking meters (Disabled Persons (Badges for Motor Vehicles) (Scotland) Regulations 2000 as amended). (May be subject to further assessment.)
Note 47: Aberdeenshire introduced an electronic data capture system in 2010; therefore figures may not be comparable with previous years.
Note 48: Glasgow changed data capture process in 2011; therefore figures may not be comparable with previous years.
Note 49: Highland Council, in April 2010, introduced a fee for the first time which may have contributed to the decline in number of badges issued.
Note 50: Orkney introduced an electronic system in 2009; therefore figures may not be comparable with previous years.
Note 51: Scottish Borders data was reviewed in 2012. Data is not available for previous years and is therefore excluded from the totals. Scottish Borders is included in the 2012 totals
Note 52: City of Edinburgh Council advised of error in 2013 total. Revised figure down from 27,309 to17,502
Note 53: The 2020 figures include cancelled and replaced badges as we now have the timestamps for those elements. This takes into account badges that may have been cancelled or replaced after March 2020.
Source and interpretation
Council names are matched through explicit reviewed aliases to all 32 official Scottish council codes; no approximate name matching is used.
Blue Badge data counts badges on issue at 31 March 2025, including organisations. It is not annual awards, a count of drivers, or a count of people needing driving lessons.
The Blue Badge worksheet title still says 2023; its column headings, category totals and the accompanying 2025 publication commentary identify the latest figures as 31 March 2025. The original title is preserved.
Taxi and Blue Badge tables are labelled Not Accredited Official Statistics by the source. Taxi licence counts are not necessarily counts of unique drivers; some councils issue combined licences. Unavailable values remain unavailable.
Wheelchair-accessible taxi totals describe licensed vehicles, not their current availability or suitability for a particular wheelchair. Check pickup, dimensions and assistance with the operator.
Scottish Household Survey percentages are weighted national estimates. Sample sizes, small-sample markers, age bands and source notes are retained. Survey groups are not local council estimates or a measure of unmet demand.
Car-access categories One+ and Two+ overlap other categories. Do not add them to the individual zero, one, two and three-or-more groups. Historical Census 2011 tables from the workbook are not presented as Census 2022.
Scottish Transport Statistics 2025 · published 25 March 2026 · downloaded 29/09/2026. © Crown copyright, Open Government Licence.
Census 2022: the detail for your council
Explore household vehicle access, English language skills, British Sign Language, main language, everyday-activity limitations and travel to work. Each council page keeps the original categories and population definitions alongside practical links for learning and teaching.
How these council figures are calculated
Driving Sorted calculation: sum of Census 2022 output-area cells joined to council areas using the NRS OA2022–CA2019 lookup. These are derived counts, not NRS published council totals. Disclosure protection means components and totals can differ.
The source dash (-) is processed as zero, following the Geographic Data Service published preprocessing of this same NRS download. Original dash counts are retained by category. This processing convention does not establish that no one with that characteristic lives in an output area.
Use each table’s own population denominator. A person can belong to more than one subject group; tables must not be added together. Scotland Census 2022 is a different reference date and some definitions differ from Census 2021 elsewhere in the UK.
The exact geography lookup covers all 46,363 output areas once, without matching by similar names. Each percentage uses that table’s total, so commuting uses employed residents and car availability uses occupied households. BSL skills and main language are separate questions.
Aberdeen City
Six census subjects · 1,963 source output areas
Aberdeenshire
Six census subjects · 2,112 source output areas
Angus
Six census subjects · 1,009 source output areas
Argyll and Bute
Six census subjects · 774 source output areas
City of Edinburgh
Six census subjects · 4,420 source output areas
Clackmannanshire
Six census subjects · 442 source output areas
Dumfries and Galloway
Six census subjects · 1,300 source output areas
Dundee City
Six census subjects · 1,310 source output areas
East Ayrshire
Six census subjects · 1,030 source output areas
East Dunbartonshire
Six census subjects · 875 source output areas
East Lothian
Six census subjects · 914 source output areas
East Renfrewshire
Six census subjects · 740 source output areas
Falkirk
Six census subjects · 1,342 source output areas
Fife
Six census subjects · 3,183 source output areas
Glasgow City
Six census subjects · 5,314 source output areas
Highland
Six census subjects · 2,054 source output areas
Inverclyde
Six census subjects · 694 source output areas
Midlothian
Six census subjects · 776 source output areas
Moray
Six census subjects · 806 source output areas
Na h-Eileanan Siar
Six census subjects · 235 source output areas
North Ayrshire
Six census subjects · 1,155 source output areas
North Lanarkshire
Six census subjects · 2,845 source output areas
Orkney Islands
Six census subjects · 188 source output areas
Perth and Kinross
Six census subjects · 1,291 source output areas
Renfrewshire
Six census subjects · 1,590 source output areas
Scottish Borders
Six census subjects · 1,025 source output areas
Shetland Islands
Six census subjects · 189 source output areas
South Ayrshire
Six census subjects · 978 source output areas
South Lanarkshire
Six census subjects · 2,770 source output areas
Stirling
Six census subjects · 750 source output areas
West Dunbartonshire
Six census subjects · 816 source output areas
West Lothian
Six census subjects · 1,473 source output areas
Sources, processing and downloads
National Records of Scotland output-area data · Original NRS geography index · Geographic Data Service preprocessing reference · NRS statistical disclosure control.
Contains National Records of Scotland data © Crown copyright 2024, under the Open Government Licence. Source checksums, original footnotes and counts of dash symbols are retained in the download.
Download all six subjects, council counts and provenance