Swindon has ranked as the worst place to live in the southwest of England.
The Times released its annual list of British towns and cities to judge where the overall quality of life was highest in terms of low crime, good schools, efficient health services, interesting historic buildings, and green public spaces.
In the southwest region, Cheltenham placed highest – ranking second out of England’s 291 local authorities, just below the Richmond area of London in first place – while Swindon placed at 188th and the rest of Wiltshire was collectively ranked at 79th.
Elsewhere, Bath and North East Somerset just about managed to reach the top 10, Bristol ranked slightly above wider Wiltshire at 78, and Oxford placed 112th.
The Times combined nine different data sets covering a range of different categories for every local authority in Britain, including crime rates, Ofsted reports and “Progress 8 scores, satisfaction with GPs, waiting times and treatment targets, the number of listed buildings and community-listed companies per area, and how many parks with Green Flags there were.
In the rest of the UK, Ceredigion was dubbed the best place to live in Wales, Na h-Eileanan Siar topped the Scottish table, and the dynamic duo of Fermanagh and Omagh ranked highest in Northern Ireland.
Each measure was given a rank between 1 and 291 then weighted equally.
They were calculated using the amount of offences in the area per 1,000 people as of March 2024, the percentage of schools in the area rated 'Outstanding' by Ofsted, the average Attainment 8 score 2023-24, the percentage of patients seen for treatment in 18 weeks after referral as of October 2024, the median wait time between referral and treatment as of October 2024, the percentage of patients that rated GPs in the area as 'good', and the number of listed buildings, parks in the area with a Green Flag Award, and registered community interest companies per 10,000 people.
In these categories, Swindon ranked very highly for GP satisfaction, and ranked higher than average for low crime, listed buildings, successfully achieving NHS wait time targets and least average weeks between referral and treatment.
Swindon’s amount of Outstanding schools, high Progress 8 scores, community interest companies and parks with a Green Flag award put it into the lower third of the Times’ ranking system for each category.
The town’s average house price is said to be £273,000.
By comparison, wider Wiltshire ranked highly for its low crime, high amount of listed buildings and GP satisfaction, but fared less well with schools, parks and CICs, with the rest of the categories hovering around the midpoint.
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