Is Chester, Cheshire a nice place to live?

Is Chester a nice place to live or is Chester rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that Chester is on the up an up, it's time for a bit of reality. Cold hard statistics culled from the Police, the Indices of Deprivation and the latest census. Is Chester truly a nice place to live, or are Broughton, Queensferry and Saltney a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in Chester?

Using the latest Police street crime figures (typically from 3 months ago) we have compiled a table of the most voilent Policing areas in and around Chester. Naturally the more urban and more central areas will have a higher rate of crime, but often you can be surprised when that is not the case and that is the area you want to move to.
Policing Area Voilent Crimes
Boughton 126
Chester 121
Hoole 81
Lache 32
Saltney 22
Little Mancot 9
Broughton 6
Lower Kinnerton 5
Bretton 2
Gorstella 0

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for Chester. These statistics are published by the government every 2-3 years. They are a measure of how likely you are to be a victim of personal or material crime in an area, such as muggings or burglary. We've taken the rank average for wards in and around Chester and compared them. The table below shows ten wards in this area, from the best to the worst.

You least likely to be a victim of crime in the Great Boughton ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Great Boughton (Best) 24173/32845
Upton 22859/32845
Newton & Hoole 21862/32845
Handbridge Park 20356/32845
Lache 14386/32845
Chester City & the Garden Quarter 13451/32845
Blacon 7737/32845
Saltney Stonebridge 1134/32845
Saltney Mold Junction 634/32845
Sealand (Worst) 167/32845
Reader Opinion:

Birkenhead: the roid ridden a***hole of merseyside

Your Health in Chester

If you are thinking of moving to Chester, you want to know if the place is likely to put you on a downward spiral of ill health. We've taken the healh question from the latest census to find out and how Chester compares to its neighbouring local authorities. People were asked to rate their current health from very bad to very good;

Town Very Bad Bad
Cheshire West and Chester (Chester) 1.21% 4.33%
Cheshire East 1.06% 3.85%
Flintshire 1.25% 4.44%
Wrexham 1.37% 4.84%

The English Indices of Deprivation also has health statistics for Chester. They measures the risk of premature death and the impairment of quality of life through poor physical or mental health, lovely! We've collated an average rank for all the Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA) in each ward in and around Chester. The table below shows ten wards in this area, from the best to the worst;

Ward Average rank in England
Great Boughton (Best) 19232/32845
Handbridge Park 18756/32845
Upton 17607/32845
Newton & Hoole 16477/32845
Chester City & the Garden Quarter 11674/32845
Lache 10338/32845
Blacon 6881/32845
Saltney Stonebridge 919/32845
Saltney Mold Junction 681/32845
Sealand (Worst) 440/32845
Reader Opinion:

Ellesmere Port is a toilet

Deprivation in Chester

Using the English Indices of Deprivation statistics, we've collated the average Index of Multiple Deprivation rank of all the LSOAs in the wards in and around Chester. In layman's terms, this is how rough the ward is based on mutiple measures of deprivation including; employment, income, health, crime, housing and outside space.

Ward Average rank in England
Great Boughton (Best) 25383/32845
Handbridge Park 23539/32845
Upton 22244/32845
Newton & Hoole 21771/32845
Chester City & the Garden Quarter 16884/32845
Lache 12206/32845
Blacon 7726/32845
Saltney Stonebridge 1038/32845
Saltney Mold Junction 545/32845
Sealand (Worst) 367/32845

Average rent in Chester

Every six months the Office for National statitics publishes a snapshot of rental costs. These statistics for Chester are dated September 2021. They are split into three figures, the lower quartile, mean and upper quartile. If you recieve housing benefit or the housing benefit section of Universal Credit, the lower quartile is at the top limit of what would be affordable. The mean is the average you'd expect to pay for a rental property and the upper quartile is the average rental cost of the most expensive 25% of properties in Chester.

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in Chester

If you are thinking of moving to Chester, you'll want to know how much you can earn in a job in the town. The government publish regular statistics on gross weekly pay and pay per hour.

How grim is your Postcode?