Surging house prices mean Edinburgh and Aberdeen are the most expensive places to buy a square metre of property in Scotland, according to new research.

This area of property would set a buyer back £2,297 in the capital, while Aberdeen comes in at £2,281.

The Halifax study also revealed the average property price per square metre is £1,490 north of the border, just above the north of England as the cheapest overall place to buy a place.

The bank's report showed that £12,000 would buy a similar area in a home in the UK's most expensive place, the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The latest study appears to confirm recent evidence that the Granite City's strong property market has not been affected by the slump in the price of Brent Crude.

Prices rose by 0.5 per cent in the first three months of 2015 in Aberdeen and its suburbs, despite an overall drop of 2.9 per cent across Scotland.

The figures have left estates agents in the city reasonably optimistic the fall in oil prices will not impact on the market, despite a small drop in the number of homes coming onto the market.

Kensington and Chelsea cost almost six times the national average of £2,033 per square metre, at £11.635.

It compares with £926 per square metre in one of the country's cheapest areas, Wishaw, North Lanarkshire.

All of the top 10 most expensive areas were in London, with Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Wandsworth and Hackney also on the list.

Outside southern England, Altrincham in Cheshire is the most expensive town, with properties costing around £2,446 per square metre.

Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Harrogate, Solihull, Warwick, Leamington Spa and York were also among the most expensive towns for property outside London on a square metre basis.

Home buyers looking to buy more space with their cash might want to consider Wishaw or Airdrie, or Aberdare or Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.

Aberdare topped the list of least expensive areas at £910 per square metre. There are four towns in the top 10 of cheapest property areas with Airdrie in firth on £998 per square metre; Greenock and Coatbridge joint sixth (£1,004 per sq metre).

Halifax said that across the country, house prices per square metre have surged by 18per cent since 2010.

Greater London has experienced substantially faster growth than elsewhere in Britain with an average increase of 45per cent. Some London boroughs have seen particularly large jumps in the price of property per metre squared since 2010, with Hackney recording a 71per cent increase and Southwark recording an uplift of 70per cent.

The bank made its calculations by looking at average house prices across 331 towns, using its database, and dividing these by typical property sizes, to get the average price per metre squared.

Craig McKinlay, mortgages director at Halifax, said: "House price per square metre is a useful measure for house price comparison because it helps to adjust for differences in the size and type of properties between locations.

"Parts of central London are substantially more expensive than anywhere else in the country. Nonetheless, there are a number of notable pockets outside the south of England where property prices are also high price per square metre.

"There has been a clear widening in the gap between southern England, particularly London, and the rest of the country over the past 20 years - a trend that has continued during the last five years."