1.0 What are 20 Minute Neighbourhoods?

The 20 minute neighbourhood and living locally concepts aim to create places where people can meet the majority of their daily needs within a reasonable distance of their home by active travel, including walking wheeling or cycling, with cities such as Melbourne, Paris and Portland adopting the concept.

But what benefits do these concepts bring? These concepts aim to create complete, compact and connected neighbourhoods in which local economies are strengthened, encourage greater local interaction, and support more healthy choices. They address interconnected problems including :-

  • How to reduce carbon emissions and air pollution?
  • How to help people become more active to improve their physical and mental health?
  • How to reduce loneliness?
  • How to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food?
  • How to reverse the decline in local high streets and economies?

The Scottish Government has adopted developing 20 minute neighbourhoods in policy in National Planning Policy Framework 4. Strict adherence to a ’20 minute’ travel time is not always suitable for rural areas. Instead, living locally can be adopted, following the same ambition, but better reflecting the challenges and realities of living in rural areas. Fife has adopted a living well locally context due to its mix of urban and rural settlements.


2.0 Scottish Living Locally Data Portal (SLLDP)

The Scottish Living Locally Data Portal (SLLDP) is an interactive online map showing locations in Scotland whether they have access (15 minute, 20 minute and 30 minute) to the following 12 living locally domains:

  • Healthy food retail
  • Public transport
  • High frequency public transport
  • Social & cultural
  • Primary healthcare
  • Pharmacy
  • Primary school
  • Eating establishment
  • Accessible public open space
  • Recreation and sports facilities
  • Financial
  • Superfast broadband (fixed)


3.0 Living Locally - Fife Context

The interactive map below provides an overview of Fife’s accessibility based on datazone geography from reduced accessibility (dark) to increased accessibility (light), based on Scottish Living Locally Data. This represents the percentage of residential locations, within each datazone, that are within a 20 minute neighbourhood (800m network distance). Layers include combined domains, and specific domains. Please select relevant layers and click on the map to access the pop up to show datazone name and percentage of residential locations within 20 minutes access. Although the public transport domain is shown on the map from reduced to increased accessibility, the datazone symbology is not consistent with the legend due to values ranging from 53% to 100% of residential locations within a 20 minute neighbourhood.

The data is presented below in a searchable table, showing combined domains and the specific domains accessibility at datazone level. The combined domains highlight the lower accessibility in rural areas, particularly in North East Fife, further highlighting that the 20 minute neigbourhood concept does not reflect rural living. Areas indicating the highest combined domain accessibility within City of Dunfermline and central Fife urban areas. Please use the search function to search by datazone name.

The tables below provide an overview of the datazones with the top 25 highest and 25 lowest combined domain accessibility (highest and lowest 5% of datazones). For further breakdown on specific living locally domains please use the interactive table above.

Percentage of Locations by Combined Domain - High Accessibility
Datazone Name % Locations Domains Combined
Kincardine South 100
Comrie East 100
Brucefield West 100
Brucefield South West 100
Rosyth Kings North 100
Admiralty North 100
Rosyth Kings East 100
Admiralty Central 100
Dalgety Longhill Park 100
Dalgety Donibristle South 100
Kelty Oakfield 100
Kelty Central 100
Kelty North East 100
Bowhill West 100
Bowhill East 100
Lochgelly East 100
Lochgelly West and Lumphinnans Central 100
Lochgelly West 100
Kinghorn Central 100
Kirkcaldy Central South 100
Bennochy Balfour 100
Forth Park North 100
Hayfield North 100
Auchmuty East 100
Pitteuchar Central 100
Percentage of Locations by Combined Domain - Low Accessibility
Datazone Name % Locations Domains Combined
Kilmany Rathillet and Logie 10.9
Peat Inn and Dunino 11.8
St Fort and Pickletillem 13.7
Flisk Lindores and Luthrie 14.5
Crossgates South Knowe and Annfield 15.6
Bow of Fife Tarvit and Balgarvie 16.5
Bonnybank and Montrave 19.1
Auchtertool 20.2
Largoward Landward 22.2
Star and Kirkforthar 23.9
Gowkhall and Landward 25.8
Knock Hill Landward 26.1
Dairsie and Kemback 27.6
New Gilston and Upper Largo 28.8
Finglassie North and Southfield 30.3
Raith 31.2
Leuchatsbeath 31.3
Ceres East and Pitscottie 31.4
Feddinch and The Grange 31.6
Kingskettle and Balmalcolm 33.7
Strathore 34.9
Lochty View 34.9
Kincardine North and Tulliallan 35.3
Seafield South and Landward 35.9
Jamphlars and Lochgelly Landward 36.0


4.0 Results

Urban Rural

Plot 1 highlights the count of datazones in which two thirds of residential locations are within 10 minute walking distance, for combined domain accessibility. This is split by the Scottish Government Urban Rural classification, highlighting the increased accessibility of urban areas compared to accessible small towns and accessible rural areas.


Deprivation

Plot 2 shows the count of datazones in which two thirds of residential locations are within 10 minute walking distance, for combined domain accessibility. This is split by overall Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation deprivation (SIMD) decile, with 10 being most deprived to 100 least deprived. This highlights the general increased accessibility of the most deprived datazones, and reduced accessibility of the least deprived datazones. Datazones that are within deciles 20, 30 and 40 have the highest number of datazones within 20 minute neighbourhoods comapred to deciles 70 and 90. Although overall deprivation includes an access domain, this was a better representation of deprivation than a single SIMD domain.


Plot 3 highlights the gap between residential locations within the most deprived areas (quintile 1) and least deprived areas (quintile 5), by SIMD overall deprivation, for all domains and domains combined. Healthcare, including pharmacy and primary care, social cultural and financial domains detail the biggest gap. This was calculated as the average for each domain, broken down by SIMD quintile.

Domains

Plot 4 provides a breakdown in the count of datazones in which two thirds of residential locations are within 10 minute walking distance, by the number of domains. This highlights that datazones in Fife primarily have increased access to a range of domains, with a rise in datazone count as domain levels increase.


5.0 Summary

The Scottish Living Locally Data Portal enables an overview of accessiblity by active travel in Fife, including how this changes dependent on the domain being explored. Attaining 20 minute neighbourhoods in Fife is unrealistic due to the mix of urban and rural locations. Fife Council has adopted Local Living, with key challenges identiifed to the delivery in Fife including:-

  • The centralisation of key services
  • Infrequent, slow and expensive public transport
  • The size of settlements and distance between them in very rural areas
  • Lack of good quality, safe and direct active travel links between key destinations

Although areas of increased deprivation generally have higher accessibility this is linked to these areas often being urban, and does not reflect the heightened social-economic barriers to accessing services.


6.0 References

The Scottish Living Locally Data Portal (SLLDP) was built by Jessica Hepburn and Jonathan Olsen (MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow) based on data from Olsen, JR., Thornton, L., Tregonning, G., Mitchell, R. (2022) Nationwide equity assessment of the 20-minute neighbourhood in the Scottish context: a socio-spatial proximity analysis of residential locations. Social Science & Medicine. Volume 315, 2022.) The Scottish Living Locally Data Portal (SLLDP) data is available in spreadsheet and shapefile format (subject to data licence requirements). These can be accessed by contacting . The full methodology and description of domain data are provided in the report published in Social Science & Medicine. The text, tables and charts were created in R Markdown using the following packages tidyverse, ggmap, SF, leaflet, leaflet extras, html tools, DT, kableExtra, glue and ggtext.


Links to included source/information


7.0 Contacts

This report was prepared by Fife Council Communities Research Team in May 2024.

Feedback and questions are welcome at