Over 300 earthquakes in UK in 2025, geological data reveals

Among the most active regions were Perthshire and the western Highlands in Scotland, southern parts of Wales, and Yorkshire and Lancashire in England, the British Geological Survey (BGS) data shows.

The two largest onshore earthquakes happened hours apart on October 20 near Loch Lyon in Perth and Kinross, when a 3.7-magnitude tremor was shortly followed by one of magnitude 3.6.

One local resident described it as feeling “like an underground subway under my house”, while another said “the house shook and all the windows rattled”.

After the event, BGS received 198 “felt reports” from people describing their experience of the quake, some more than 60km from the epicentre.

BGS said 34 of the earthquakes happened near Loch Lyon between October and December.

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The third largest onshore earthquake was one of 3.2 magnitude at Silverdale in Lancashire on December 3, which sparked nearly 700 “felt reports”.

The data shows 309 earthquakes had been recorded across the UK this year up to December 18.

Brian Baptie, a seismologist at BGS, said: “The data shows that earthquakes occurred in many parts of Great Britain over the past 12 months, with numerous events in Scotland, England and Wales that were each significant enough to be widely felt by many nearby.

“Whilst thankfully major earthquakes of devasting magnitude are extremely unlikely, the country on average experienced an earthquake almost once a day this year.

“It is a reminder that small earthquakes happen all the time and it remains of critical importance that they are studied to help us understand the possible impact of the rare large earthquakes on major energy and infrastructure projects around the country.”

Seismic activity is recorded by a network of 80 monitoring stations around the UK which are operated by BGS.