Edinburgh named as Britain's loneliest place

For centuries, princes and paupers have lived cheek-by-jowl in Holyrood, joined in recent years by the politicians, lobbyists and journalists who every day roll out of its cafés and bars.

For all its teeming life, however, this hub of Scotland's capital - with its palace, parliament, council estate and 300-year-old tenements - has been dubbed the loneliest place in Britain. Worse still, it stands at the heart of Edinburgh, the loneliest city.

This, at least, is the conclusion of Changing Britain, a study of the gradual transformation of communities produced by Sheffield University. The report shows that the “social glue” which binds towns and cities together has eroded over 40 years, and the trend is most marked in Scotland.

Researchers based their findings on census data, applying a sociological formula to factors such as the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived in their home for less than a year.