Methodology
Every figure on this site is derived from published open data. This page shows the working, including where the numbers are weaker than they look.
Social housing share
Census tenure tables counted on census day — ONS table TS054 (England & Wales, 2021), National Records of Scotland UV404 (2022) and NISRA (Northern Ireland, 2021). "Social housing" means a household renting from a council/local authority or a housing association. Small-area figures are summed to local-authority totals by this site, so they can differ slightly from officially published council totals. Scotland reports a single combined social-rented figure rather than splitting council from housing association.
House prices per square metre
HM Land Registry Price Paid sold prices from 2022 onwards, matched to floor areas from Energy Performance Certificates, then reduced to a median for each neighbourhood. Only sales that match an EPC record can be used, so flats and newer homes are better represented than unusual properties. England and Wales only — Scotland and Northern Ireland do not publish equivalent open price data.
Recorded crime and anti-social behaviour
Street-level records from data.police.uk. These are reported incidents snapped to anonymised map points, not convictions, and reporting rates differ between places and crime types. Busy areas with few residents — town centres, stations — look worse per head than they feel. Coverage is England, Wales and Northern Ireland; Police Scotland does not publish street-level open data.
Council crime rates on the area pages count the latest 12 months of records from each council's own police force (British Transport Police is left out because its published series has long gaps), excluding anti-social behaviour, per 1,000 residents from the 2021 Census (NISRA's mid-2021 estimates in Northern Ireland). A force that missed a few months is scaled up to a full year and the page says so; a council whose force published fewer than 9 of the 12 months, or nothing at all (Greater Manchester, and Gwent for the latest year), gets no figure rather than a misleadingly low one. Crimes police.uk publishes without a location cannot be placed in a council and are not counted. Scottish councils use the Scottish Government's recorded crime statistics instead; Scotland counts and groups crimes differently, so Scottish rates are compared only with each other.
Noise
Official strategic noise maps produced under the Environmental Noise Directive by DEFRA, Natural Resources Wales and the Scottish Government. They model road and rail noise around major sources rather than measuring it, and they do not cover every road — a quiet shading means "not modelled as a major source", not "silent".
The council figure — the share of homes in areas with 65 dB Lden or more — takes the share of each census area modelled at that level (road or rail, whichever is louder) and weights it by the area's households. Scotland's map is a consolidated one that also includes aircraft and industry. Northern Ireland publishes no open noise map, so its councils have no figure.
Parks and play spaces
Ordnance Survey's OS Open Greenspace (Great Britain). For each census area we measure the straight-line distance from its centre to the edge of the nearest public park or garden, and separately the nearest children's play space, on a 10 m grid. The council figure is the share of households in areas within 400 m, roughly a five-minute walk. A straight line is shorter than the real route, and the data says nothing about opening hours or upkeep. Northern Ireland is not covered.
Deprivation
The English Indices of Deprivation 2025, plus WIMD (Wales), SIMD (Scotland) and NIMDM (Northern Ireland). Each nation ranks its own neighbourhoods, so a decile in Wales is not comparable with a decile in England. Local-authority figures here are the median decile of that council's neighbourhoods and the share of them in the most-deprived national fifth.
Broadband
Ofcom Connected Nations fixed-line data, aggregated from postcode to neighbourhood. It records the fastest speed available to order, not what residents actually buy or receive.
Schools and nurseries
Schools come from the DfE's Get Information about Schools register, with inspection outcomes from Ofsted's monthly management information. Nurseries and pre-schools come from Ofsted's childcare register and cover England only. Childminders and home childcarers are deliberately excluded: Ofsted withholds their addresses for personal safety, and mapping people's homes would be wrong.
Both are attributed to a local authority through the school's or provider's postcode using the ONS National Statistics Postcode Lookup — not by the authority name printed in the source file, because the schools register names education authorities (counties) rather than districts. The "Good or Outstanding" share is calculated over schools that have a published Ofsted grade, not over all schools; the 2025 report-card framework uses a different scale and still covers a small minority.
What these figures cannot tell you
All of it is area-level. Nothing here describes an individual street, building or household, and a neighbourhood average can hide a lot of variation inside it. Census data is a snapshot from 2021–22 and places change. Use this to narrow a shortlist, then go and stand on the street.