Is Rayleigh, Essex a nice place to live?

Is Rayleigh a nice place to live or is Rayleigh rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that Rayleigh 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 Rayleigh truly a nice place to live, or are Hadleigh, Hockley and Leigh on Sea a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in Rayleigh?

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 Rayleigh. 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
Thundersley 46
Rayleigh 44
New Thundersley 31
Hadleigh 25
Shotgate 21
Hockley 14
Battlesbridge 13
Mill Hill 10
Rawreth Shot 8
Rawreth 6

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for Rayleigh. 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 Rayleigh 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 Hockley ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Hockley (Best) 28993/32845
Sweyne Park and Grange 28181/32845
Lodge 28105/32845
Trinity 27300/32845
Downhall and Rawreth 26990/32845
Cedar Hall 25217/32845
Hullbridge 24771/32845
St Peter's 22486/32845
Victoria 21557/32845
Wheatley (Worst) 18335/32845
Reader Opinion:

Billericay the bullsh*t town of Essex

Your Health in Rayleigh

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

Town Very Bad Bad
Basildon 1.32% 4.21%
Southend-on-Sea 1.26% 4.48%
Castle Point 1.26% 4.4%
Rochford (Rayleigh) 0.94% 3.38%

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

Ward Average rank in England
Hockley (Best) 29502/32845
Lodge 28795/32845
Wheatley 28695/32845
Trinity 28591/32845
Downhall and Rawreth 28275/32845
Sweyne Park and Grange 27778/32845
Hullbridge 26638/32845
St Peter's 22670/32845
Victoria 21914/32845
Cedar Hall (Worst) 21862/32845
Reader Opinion:

Rochford a.k.a Lesser Southend

Deprivation in Rayleigh

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 Rayleigh. 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
Hockley (Best) 29503/32845
Trinity 28200/32845
Lodge 26970/32845
Wheatley 25949/32845
Sweyne Park and Grange 25595/32845
Downhall and Rawreth 25559/32845
Hullbridge 24397/32845
St Peter's 23895/32845
Cedar Hall 22596/32845
Victoria (Worst) 20562/32845

Average rent in Rayleigh

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

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in Rayleigh

If you are thinking of moving to Rayleigh, 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?