 Airdrie in North Lanarkshire |
North Lanarkshire is one of the 32 unitary council areas into which Scotland has been divided since 1996. It is the council area which lies immediately to the east of the City of Glasgow and includes within its boundaries parts of the northern edge of the Glasgow conurbation. For accommodation in North Lanarkshire and a full list of features, see our Glasgow & Clyde Valley area pages.
 North Lanarkshire Since 1996 Note About Image Copyright |
Significant settlements in North Lanarkshire include Airdrie, Bellshill, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Kilsyth, Motherwell and Wishaw. The fairly heavily built up nature of much of North Lanarkshire helps explain why it is the 4th largest of Scotland's council areas in terms of population despite being only 19th largest in terms of physical size.
North Lanarkshire is bordered on its north by Stirling; on its east by Falkirk and West Lothian; on its south by South Lanarkshire; and on its west by the City of Glasgow and East Dunbartonshire.
From the point of view of local authority coverage, the 1996 reorganisation that discarded Scotland's 12 regions in favour of 32 unitary council areas saw North Lanarkshire formed from the Motherwell and Monklands districts of Strathclyde Region, plus most of the Cumbernauld & Kilsyth district. If you take a longer view and compare North Lanarkshire to the traditional counties of Scotland before they were replaced by regions in 1975, it occupies areas that were once part of the traditional counties of Dunbartonshire, Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire.
