Crap Towns / Aberdeenshire / Westhill
Westhill
5/100Crap Score
938th crappest of 984 towns, and 6th in Aberdeenshire. 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
Westhill. The middle's a car park.
A planned commuter town full of subsea engineers, with a car park where the centre should be.
Westhill was built from scratch for the folk who work offshore, and under it, and the subsea firms out at Arnhall like to call it SURF City. Nobody else does. The town centre is a car park with some shops round the edge. It fought off being swallowed by Aberdeen and won, and it's still working out what it won.
Burglary barely happens and there's no sewage to speak of. What it does have is potholes, or folk who report them: 385 in a year, nearly sixty times the typical Scottish town's rate. It has 2 Greggs and 2 pubs. In Westhill that's a balanced diet.
What the score is made of
Ten ingredients, each marked out of 100. Higher is crapper.
Westhill's 99 for broadband means it's crapper than 99% of towns.
- Broadband99/10047.7% of premises can't get gigabit, January 2026, and 51.5% across the Aberdeenshire council area
- Rain70/100145 days of rain a year, at least 1 mm, 1991 to 2020 average
- Food hygiene68/1007.6% told to improve, of the 53 food businesses inspected
- Fly-tipping50/100
- Serious road collisions3/1000.5 per 10,000 people a year, fatal and serious, 2021 to 2025
- Sewage spills2/1000.0 spill hours per 10,000 people a year, storm overflows within 1 km, 2023 to 2025
- Deliberate fires2/1003.7 per 10,000 people a year, April 2023 to March 2026
- Air pollution1/1003.7 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 4.1 of fine particles, 2024 average
- Anti-social behaviour1/1001.6 per 1,000 people a year, January 2023 to December 2025
- Criminal damage and arson0/1001.4 per 1,000 people a year, January 2023 to December 2025
| Pos | Town | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peterhead | 50 |
| In danger of becoming nice from here down.2 | Fraserburgh | 35 |
| 3 | Inverurie | 21 |
| 4 | Stonehaven | 14 |
| 5 | Ellon | 6 |
| 6 | Westhill | 5 |
Below the dashed line: in danger of becoming nice.
Westhill by numbers
Thinking of moving here? Don't say we didn't warn you.
Crime, muck and dodgy water
- 14.9 crimes per 1,000 people a year (January 2023 to December 2025) Better: 73% lower than the typical Scottish town's 54.4
- 385 reports of potholes and bad road surfaces on FixMyStreet, the most reported problem in the year to October 2026 Worse: 328 per 10,000 people, 58.6x the typical Scottish town's 5.6
What's left on the high street
Getting about, getting online, getting rained on
- 12.12am last bus out on a Wednesday About the same: About the same as the typical town's 12.14am
- 0.7% of premises can't get superfast broadband (January 2026) Worse: 40% higher than the typical town's 0.5%
- 3.3% live more than 400 metres from a park or play space Better: 79% lower than the typical town's 15.5%
- 1,421 hours of sunshine a year (1991 to 2020 average) Worse: 7% lower than the typical town's 1,532
Aberdeenshire council
- £1,686 Band D council tax (2026-27) About the same: £33 more than the Scottish average
- 27% of Aberdeenshire council's unclassified roads should have been considered for maintenance (2025-26) Better: 25% lower than Scotland's 36%
- 88 ombudsman complaints decided in 2025-26, none upheld About the same: 33.4 per 100,000 residents, about the same as Scotland's 34.7
- 96.7% 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
Westhill 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.