1.1 This paper summarises the Registrar General for Scotland’s mid-2006 based population projections for the council and NHS board areas of Scotland. The projections are consistent with the mid-2006 based national population projections, prepared by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on behalf of the Registrars General for the constituent countries of the UK.
1.2 As well as producing the main "principal" projection ONS also produce "variant" projections using alternative plausible assumptions. This paper concentrates on the "principal" projection but also includes a section on the high migration variant which assumes larger net flows of migrants into Scotland. This variant was chosen as the migration assumption has a large effect on the projected population and future migration levels are particularly difficult to predict. This is the first time that a variant projection has been made available for the council and NHS board areas of Scotland.
1.3 The projections in this paper are based on revised 2006 population estimates published on 27 July 2007.
1.4 This round of sub-national projections has been prepared up to 2031 (25 years ahead), rather than for 20 years as in the 2004-based projections. This is to aid councils in the production of structure plans. Other small changes have been made to the software and method used to produce the projections and these are explained in Section 5. It should be remembered when looking at these results that they are mainly trend based and do not take account of policy initiatives. It is also important to note that projections become more uncertain the further ahead they go, especially for smaller areas, as these populations are affected more by the migration assumptions. The uses and the limitations of these projections are described in more detail in Section 6.