Crap Towns / Fife / Glenrothes
Glenrothes
52/100Crap Score
477th crappest of 984 towns, and 4th in Fife. Higher scores are crapper.
Have your say
Crap Town of the Year 2026/27
See the raceThe public vote. It's separate from the Crap Score, and it closes on 31 December 2027.
Letters from the locals
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agree it's crap have defended it
Built on purpose. Fucking hell.
A new town built for a coal mine that shut within a few years. Then they put up concrete hippos and called it a plan.
Glenrothes was built after the war for the miners of the Rothes pit, which flooded and shut a few years after it opened. So it's a new town with no reason to be there, a shopping centre where the high street should be, and the council's headquarters, which means the whole of Fife gets to blame it.
To cheer it up somebody stuck public art all over the place, concrete hippos and giant mushrooms on the verges. There are play parks everywhere, four times as many as a town this size normally gets, and hardly any pubs. The weans have somewhere to go. Their dads haven't.
The bins get set alight at one and a half times the typical Scottish town's rate. In a town this quiet, that's the entertainment.
What the score is made of
Ten ingredients, each marked out of 100. Higher is crapper.
Glenrothes's 78 for deliberate fires means it's crapper than 78% of towns.
- Deliberate fires78/10033.9 per 10,000 people a year, April 2023 to March 2026
- Broadband76/10010.7% of premises can't get gigabit, January 2026, and 16.9% across the Fife council area
- Serious road collisions72/1002.1 per 10,000 people a year, fatal and serious, 2021 to 2025
- Rain71/100146 days of rain a year, at least 1 mm, 1991 to 2020 average
- Criminal damage and arson61/1007.8 per 1,000 people a year, January 2023 to December 2025
- Anti-social behaviour51/1008.4 per 1,000 people a year, January 2023 to December 2025
- Fly-tipping50/100
- Food hygiene33/1004.1% told to improve, of the 245 food businesses inspected
- Sewage spills18/10034.8 spill hours per 10,000 people a year, storm overflows within 1 km, 2025
- Air pollution5/1004.9 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 4.4 of fine particles, 2024 average
| Pos | Town | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirkcaldy | 76 |
| 2 | Cowdenbeath | 62 |
| 3 | Methil | 53 |
| 4 | Glenrothes | 52 |
| In danger of becoming nice from here down.5 | Rosyth | 30 |
| 6 | Leven | 28 |
| 7 | Dunfermline | 18 |
| 8 | St Andrews | 5 |
Below the dashed line: in danger of becoming nice.
Glenrothes by numbers
Thinking of moving here? Don't say we didn't warn you.
Crime, muck and dodgy water
- 57.4 crimes per 1,000 people a year (January 2023 to December 2025) Worse: 6% higher than the typical Scottish town's 54.4
- 2 problems reported on FixMyStreet in the year to October 2026 Better: 0.5 per 10,000 people, 98% lower than the typical Scottish town's 20.1
What's left on the high street
- 7 pubs, 20 hairdressers, 8 charity shops, 4 bookmakers, 2 vape shops, 6 banks, 2 Greggs on the map here as of 1 October 2026
- 11.4% of takeaways inspected told to improve (4 of 35) Worse: 25% higher than the typical Scottish town's 9.1%
- 6 public toilets on the map (October 2026) About the same: 1.6 per 10,000 people, about the same as the typical town's 1.6
Getting about, getting online, getting rained on
- 12.58am last bus out on a Wednesday Better: Later than the typical town's 12.14am
- 0.2% of premises can't get superfast broadband (January 2026) Better: 60% lower than the typical town's 0.5%
- 2.7% live more than 400 metres from a park or play space Better: 83% lower than the typical town's 15.5%
- 1,351 hours of sunshine a year (1991 to 2020 average) Worse: 12% lower than the typical town's 1,532
Fife council
- £1,574 Band D council tax (2026-27) About the same: £79 less than the Scottish average
- 32% of Fife council's unclassified roads should have been considered for maintenance (2025-26) Better: 11% lower than Scotland's 36%
- 127 ombudsman complaints decided in 2025-26, 2 upheld About the same: 34.1 per 100,000 residents, about the same as Scotland's 34.7
- 96.1% of the streets checked passed as clean (2025-26) About the same: About the same as Scotland's 92.2%
- More on the council
Have a crap-off
Glenrothes against your mate's town, and a match ticket to rub it in.
- ?Fly-tippingper 1,000, council area?
- ?Anti-social behaviourper 1,000 people?
- ?Serious road crashesper 10,000 people?
- ?Sewage spillshours per 10,000 people?
- ?Food hygienerated poor?
- ?Criminal damageper 1,000 people?
- ?Dirty airµg/m³?
- ?No gigabitof premises can't get it?
- ?Deliberate firesper 10,000 people?
- ?Raindays a year?
Ten ingredients. One verdict. Who's crapper? The higher Crap Score takes it.