Is St Helens, Merseyside a nice place to live?

Is St Helens a nice place to live or is St Helens rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that St Helens 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 St Helens truly a nice place to live, or are Prescot, Rainhill and Whiston a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in St Helens?

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 St Helens. 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
Broad Oak 150
Haresfinch 106
Moss Bank 106
Ravenhead 105
Grange Park 71
Toll Bar 71
Brown Edge 52
Thatto Heath 52
Laffak 28
Eccleston 25

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for St Helens. 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 St Helens 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 Eccleston ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Eccleston (Best) 21764/32845
Billinge and Seneley Green 19757/32845
Blackbrook 16845/32845
Moss Bank 13530/32845
Windle 11133/32845
West Park 10813/32845
Thatto Heath 10574/32845
Sutton 9635/32845
Parr 5416/32845
Town Centre (Worst) 3717/32845

Your Health in St Helens

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

Town Very Bad Bad
Sefton 1.62% 5.68%
Knowsley 2.18% 7.29%
St. Helens (St Helens) 1.79% 6.48%
West Lancashire 1.45% 4.86%

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

Ward Average rank in England
Billinge and Seneley Green (Best) 9899/32845
Eccleston 9764/32845
Blackbrook 5133/32845
Moss Bank 4849/32845
Windle 4655/32845
Sutton 4226/32845
Thatto Heath 3717/32845
West Park 3508/32845
Parr 1894/32845
Town Centre (Worst) 1746/32845

Deprivation in St Helens

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 St Helens. 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
Eccleston (Best) 20469/32845
Billinge and Seneley Green 19523/32845
Blackbrook 11530/32845
Moss Bank 10444/32845
Windle 10321/32845
Sutton 9098/32845
Thatto Heath 8704/32845
West Park 6915/32845
Town Centre 3236/32845
Parr (Worst) 3028/32845

Average rent in St Helens

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

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in St Helens

If you are thinking of moving to St Helens, 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?