Is St Mary Cray, London a nice place to live?

Is St Mary Cray a nice place to live or is St Mary Cray rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that St Mary Cray 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 Mary Cray truly a nice place to live, or are Bexley, Orpington and Swanley a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in St Mary Cray?

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 Mary Cray. 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
St Mary Cray 62
Ramsden 59
St Paul’s Cray 59
Kevingtown 54
Broom Hill 36
Sidcup 34
Chislehurst 17
Hockenden 14
Ruxley 10
Crockenhill 9

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for St Mary Cray. 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 Mary Cray 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 Chelsfield and Pratts Bottom ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Chelsfield and Pratts Bottom (Best) 26583/32845
Farnborough and Crofton 25569/32845
Longlands 23869/32845
Petts Wood and Knoll 23141/32845
Sidcup 18932/32845
St Mary's & St James 16199/32845
Chislehurst 14744/32845
Orpington 14721/32845
Cray Valley West 8295/32845
Cray Valley East (Worst) 6718/32845
Reader Opinion:

Sidcup's notorious Blackfen Road

Your Health in St Mary Cray

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

Town Very Bad Bad
Greenwich 1.27% 4.09%
Bromley (St Mary Cray) 0.91% 3.2%
Bexley 1.09% 3.74%
Dartford 1.03% 3.4%

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

Ward Average rank in England
Petts Wood and Knoll (Best) 31659/32845
Chelsfield and Pratts Bottom 29390/32845
Chislehurst 29153/32845
Farnborough and Crofton 28998/32845
Orpington 26524/32845
Longlands 25088/32845
St Mary's & St James 23898/32845
Sidcup 21706/32845
Cray Valley West 18559/32845
Cray Valley East (Worst) 18305/32845
Reader Opinion:

Orpington has been growing in recent years to be one of the most chavy areas imaginable.

Deprivation in St Mary Cray

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 Mary Cray. 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
Petts Wood and Knoll (Best) 30222/32845
Chelsfield and Pratts Bottom 28176/32845
Farnborough and Crofton 27122/32845
Chislehurst 24791/32845
Longlands 23385/32845
St Mary's & St James 21762/32845
Orpington 19767/32845
Sidcup 19384/32845
Cray Valley East 11423/32845
Cray Valley West (Worst) 10706/32845

Average rent in St Mary Cray

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

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in St Mary Cray

If you are thinking of moving to St Mary Cray, 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?