The growth rate of households in Scotland is now at its slowest rate in 10 years, according to the National Records of Scotland.

In new figures released by the agency, the number of households in Scotland increased every year for the last decade. In mid-2012, there were 2.39m households in the country, an increase of around 175,000 (8%) over that time. However, the rate of household increase has slowed significantly since the beginning of the economic downturn. Last year, the number of households increased by 10,700 (0.4%), its lowest yearly increase in the last 10 years.

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In all local authorities, the average household size fell between 2001 and 2008. It remained steady since 2008, but the larger cities have seen the rate begin to increase slowly.

According to the National Records of Scotland, the number of households has increased over the last year in every local authority, except for Inverclyde, where there was a fall of 42 households, and West Dunbartonshire, where there was a fall of eight households.

The areas with the greatest increase over the last 10 years in percentage terms have been Orkney Islands (16%) and Aberdeenshire (15%), while the City of Edinburgh has seen the largest increase in terms of absolute numbers (17,973 households).

Tim Ellis, Chief Executive of the National Records of Scotland, said: "While the number of households in Scotland has been increasing year on year since 2001, the growth rate has slowed since 2007, with the increase over the last year at the lowest in the past 10 years.

"The main reason for this is likely to be the economic downturn, which led to reductions in new house building, and the constrained mortgage and labour market."

(JP/CD)