Is Portsmouth, Hampshire a nice place to live?

Is Portsmouth a nice place to live or is Portsmouth rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that Portsmouth 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 Portsmouth truly a nice place to live, or are Gosport, Portchester and Southsea a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in Portsmouth?

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 Portsmouth. 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
Fratton 470
Portsea Island 433
Portsmouth 433
Landport 394
Baffins 291
Southsea 283
Portsea 229
Copnor 220
Milton 173
Anchorage Park 44

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for Portsmouth. 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 Portsmouth 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 Copnor ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Copnor (Best) 16289/32845
Milton 13388/32845
Central Southsea 11320/32845
Baffins 9732/32845
Hilsea 9689/32845
St Thomas 5421/32845
Fratton 4108/32845
Nelson 3676/32845
St Jude 2808/32845
Charles Dickens (Worst) 2409/32845
Reader Opinion:

Portsmouth - Where do I begin?

Your Health in Portsmouth

If you are thinking of moving to Portsmouth, 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 Portsmouth compares to its neighbouring local authorities. People were asked to rate their current health from very bad to very good;

Town Very Bad Bad
Portsmouth (Portsmouth) 1.15% 3.9%
Havant 1.31% 4.29%
Fareham 0.9% 3.13%
Gosport 0.99% 3.89%

The English Indices of Deprivation also has health statistics for Portsmouth. 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 Portsmouth. The table below shows ten wards in this area, from the best to the worst;

Ward Average rank in England
Copnor (Best) 18936/32845
Central Southsea 15282/32845
Baffins 15026/32845
St Jude 14666/32845
Milton 14583/32845
St Thomas 13884/32845
Hilsea 13205/32845
Fratton 9521/32845
Nelson 7944/32845
Charles Dickens (Worst) 3200/32845
Reader Opinion:

Buckland & Somerstown, two places in Pompey that are sh*tholes

Deprivation in Portsmouth

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 Portsmouth. 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
Copnor (Best) 16473/32845
Central Southsea 15792/32845
Baffins 14381/32845
Milton 13631/32845
Hilsea 12605/32845
St Thomas 12605/32845
St Jude 12557/32845
Fratton 7596/32845
Nelson 6160/32845
Charles Dickens (Worst) 3279/32845

Average rent in Portsmouth

Every six months the Office for National statitics publishes a snapshot of rental costs. These statistics for Portsmouth 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 Portsmouth.

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in Portsmouth

If you are thinking of moving to Portsmouth, 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?