Is Southwold, Suffolk a nice place to live?

Is Southwold a nice place to live or is Southwold rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that Southwold 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 Southwold truly a nice place to live, or are Dunwich, Halesworth and Leiston a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in Southwold?

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 Southwold. 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
Southwold 3
Blythburgh 1
Reydon 1
Reydon Smear 1
Cuckold’s Green 1
South Cove 0
Barnaby Green 0
Frostenden Corner 0
Wangford 0
Frostenden 0

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for Southwold. 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 Southwold 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 Halesworth & Blything ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Halesworth & Blything (Best) 26004/32845
Southwold 25128/32845
Wrentham, Wangford & Westleton 22440/32845
Carlton Colville 22432/32845
Beccles & Worlingham 21125/32845
Oulton Broad 20060/32845
Carlton & Whitton 17932/32845
Kessingland 17443/32845
Kirkley & Pakefield 11843/32845
Harbour & Normanston (Worst) 5079/32845

Your Health in Southwold

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

Town Very Bad Bad
Norwich 1.24% 4.42%
Great Yarmouth 1.63% 5.48%
South Norfolk 1.02% 3.46%

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

Ward Average rank in England
Wrentham, Wangford & Westleton (Best) 23589/32845
Halesworth & Blything 20643/32845
Southwold 19841/32845
Carlton Colville 18302/32845
Beccles & Worlingham 17223/32845
Oulton Broad 12652/32845
Carlton & Whitton 11659/32845
Kessingland 9998/32845
Kirkley & Pakefield 8917/32845
Harbour & Normanston (Worst) 6193/32845

Deprivation in Southwold

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 Southwold. 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
Southwold (Best) 18528/32845
Carlton Colville 18506/32845
Beccles & Worlingham 17864/32845
Oulton Broad 16876/32845
Halesworth & Blything 14408/32845
Wrentham, Wangford & Westleton 13694/32845
Carlton & Whitton 13167/32845
Kessingland 10738/32845
Kirkley & Pakefield 8926/32845
Harbour & Normanston (Worst) 3933/32845

Average rent in Southwold

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

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in Southwold

If you are thinking of moving to Southwold, 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?