We review the application of the renormalisation group to many-body problems, with particular emphasis on the scaling behaviour which may arise. An introductory section discusses the difficulties of calculating the many-body effects near a magnetic phase transition, and shows by a simple example how the renormalisation group may be used to predict scaling behaviour. A general discussion of scaling and universality follows, with a review of techniques for calculation in lattice models, and an outline of the approaches in field theory. The range of applications of these techniques is discussed. The introductory sections are designed for the non-expert.