Methodology

Area Score (0–100)

Scores are derived from the official English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (MHCLG), published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We take the LSOA-level domain scores (never ranks or deciles, which cannot be averaged) and aggregate them to neighbourhood (MSOA) level using population weighting (ONS mid-2022 denominators):

MSOA score = Σ(LSOA score × LSOA population) ÷ Σ(LSOA population)

Each aggregated score is then converted to a 0–100 scale by national percentile, inverted so that 100 = least deprived in England and 0 = most deprived. The same transform produces seven themed sub-scores.

Compare My Postcode relabels the official deprivation domains with neutral theme names. Provenance is unchanged:

This is relative, not absolute. Per MHCLG, there is no threshold above which an area "is deprived". An area scoring 80 is not "twice as good" as one scoring 40.

House prices

House-price figures come from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. We keep standard full-market-value sales (PPD category A) of residential property (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat) and place each sale into a neighbourhood by postcode. For each neighbourhood we compute the median price over the trailing 12 months to the latest complete month, sale volumes, and 1/5/10-year changes against like-for-like 12-month windows, plus a 20-year annual median series.

Because Land Registry registers sales with a lag of several months, the most recent months are incomplete, so we end every window three months before the latest data to avoid a biased median. Where a neighbourhood has fewer than 10 sales overall (or 5 for a property type) in the window, the figure is suppressed and we show the wider local-authority figure instead — we never interpolate or invent a value. Every figure is shown with its sample size.

We cross-check our local-authority medians against the official UK House Price Index each month and review any large divergences (these usually reflect a shift in the mix of properties sold, which the mix-adjusted UK HPI controls for and a raw median does not).

Affordability-adjusted Score

This is a derived measure that deliberately brings the two datasets together — the one place on the site where we do. For each neighbourhood we take its Area Score as a national percentile (how un-deprived it is, 0–100) and an affordability percentile built from its median house price (the cheapest neighbourhood in England scores 100, the most expensive 0). We combine them with a geometric mean and then re-rank the result into a national 0–100 percentile:

Affordability-adjusted Score = national percentile of √(Area Score × Affordability)

The geometric mean is deliberate: it rewards areas that score well on both dimensions and penalises being weak on either, so the top of the ranking is genuinely "less-deprived and cheaper than average", not just one or the other. The best value areas page ranks England by this score.

Two honest limits. "Affordable" here means cheap in national terms — it does not account for local earnings; for a true local-wages measure see the price-to-income ratio below. And because it uses a raw median, an area can look cheap simply because more of its sales are flats or smaller homes. Neighbourhoods with too few recent sales to price are excluded. This is orientation, not investment or financial advice. We never fold this score back into the Area Score itself, which remains a pure deprivation measure.

Household income & price-to-income

Income figures come from the ONS Income estimates for small areas (financial year ending 2023 edition, released December 2025) — model-based estimates of annual household income for every neighbourhood (MSOA), produced by combining survey data with administrative sources. We show two of the four published measures: net (disposable) income — the intuitive "take-home money" figure — and net income after housing costs, equivalised, the best like-for-like comparator of living standards.

Because these are modelled estimates and not measurements, every figure is published with a 95% confidence interval, and we display it (the "±" beside the estimate). Treat small differences between areas as ties. The price-to-income ratio divides an area's median house price by its typical net household income — roughly "how many years of local take-home pay buys a typical home". Unlike the Affordability-adjusted Score, this is anchored to local incomes. Larger-area figures (local authorities, regions, postcode districts) are population-weighted averages of the neighbourhood estimates, labelled as such.

Demographics (Census 2021)

The "people living here" figures come from Census 2021 (ONS): age, population density, housing tenure, household composition, car availability, highest qualification, occupation, ethnic group, religion and country of birth. We store raw counts and derive percentages at display time, so figures for larger areas are exact sums of their neighbourhoods' counts — nothing is re-modelled. Median ages are interpolated from the published five-year age bands and marked as estimates. Census figures date from March 2021 and change slowly between censuses.

Ethnicity, religion and country of birth are shown as neutral, descriptive census data only. They are never used in any score, ranking, or generated text on this site.

Recorded crime

Crime figures come from the street-level open data published at data.police.uk (Home Office), covering the most recent 12 complete months. Each incident is published against a small statistical area (LSOA) at an anonymised snap-point; we sum incidents to neighbourhoods through the same LSOA-to-MSOA lookup used for the Area Score, and express them as a rate per 1,000 residents. Anti-social behaviour is recorded differently from notifiable crimes, so it is shown separately and excluded from the headline rate.

Three honest limits. These are recorded incidents, not convictions, and recording practice varies between forces. Crimes are counted where they happen while residents are counted where they live — so town centres, retail parks and nightlife areas show high per-resident rates because visitors bring incidents with them. And some police forces do not publish usable data for every month: where a force's data is missing or incomplete for the window (currently Greater Manchester, and Gloucestershire for part of the year), we suppress the figures entirely and say "no data" — a zero there would be misleading, not reassuring. Suppressed areas are excluded from all rates, benchmarks and rankings.

Sources & licence

Area scores derived from the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (MHCLG); house prices from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. Contains ONS data. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We recommend readers verify figures with the official sources and visit areas in person. This site is for orientation only and is not advice.