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Introduction
Background to the statistics
Population statistics provide a fundamental evidence base for understanding Scotland’s population and how it changes over time. Produced by the National Records of Scotland (NRS), the mid-year population estimates (MYE) provide the official annual estimate of the resident population of Scotland and are widely used across government, local authorities, the NHS, academia and the voluntary sector. The estimates inform funding allocations, service planning, policy development and demographic analysis, and are used as inputs into a range of other statistical outputs. The MYE provide the basis for a range of related population outputs, including small area population estimates (SAPE) and population estimates for centenarians, helping to ensure coherence across Scotland’s demographic statistics.
NRS produces the MYE using the cohort component method, updating the latest population estimates annually using data on births, deaths, migration, and special populations (armed forces and prisoners). Following each census, NRS rebases the estimates to the census-based population count and revises the intercensal series. Following the 2022 Census, NRS revised estimates for mid-2011 to mid-2021, incorporating improvements to migration estimates and other components of population change. In 2025, NRS published rebased SAPE for the new 2022 data zones, bringing these estimates in line with the rebased MYE series.
OSR’s compliance review takes place against the backdrop of NRS’s wider portfolio of official statistics publications covering population, migration, households and vital events. In October 2026, NRS published its first annual statistical work programme for 2026-2027. It set out high-level priorities for NRS statistics, as well as proposed changes to existing official statistics, including for some population statistic series covered as part of this review. For SAPE, NRS proposes to release only final estimates and no provisional figures. For population estimates for centenarians in Scotland, NRS proposes to incorporate these statistics within the MYE publication, rather than publishing in a separate report. As NRS seeks to improve and modernise its statistics, the findings and recommendations of this review should be used to help inform NRS’s priority areas going forward.