Is Wantage, Oxfordshire a nice place to live?

Is Wantage a nice place to live or is Wantage rough? Forget local estate agents sales speil and local councillors who say that Wantage 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 Wantage truly a nice place to live, or are Lambourn, Didcot and Faringdon a lot better? Time to find out.

What are the crime levels like in Wantage?

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 Wantage. 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
Charlton 36
Wantage 18
Bow 3
Townsend 3
Ardington Wick 3
Milton Hill 1
Childrey 0
Sparsholt 0
Rowstock 0
Ardington 0

The English Indices of Deprivation also has crime statistics for Wantage. 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 Wantage 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 Drayton ward.

Ward Average rank in England
Drayton (Best) 30962/32845
Kingston Bagpuize 30230/32845
Blewbury & Harwell 29231/32845
Ridgeway 28757/32845
Hendreds 28254/32845
Downlands 28215/32845
Steventon & the Hanneys 27098/32845
Grove North 26344/32845
Wantage & Grove Brook 24788/32845
Wantage Charlton (Worst) 20997/32845
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Your Health in Wantage

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

Town Very Bad Bad
Swindon 0.97% 3.61%
Oxford 0.85% 2.76%
West Berkshire 0.68% 2.48%
Vale of White Horse (Wantage) 0.75% 2.61%

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

Ward Average rank in England
Kingston Bagpuize (Best) 32416/32845
Drayton 30518/32845
Downlands 29973/32845
Grove North 29950/32845
Wantage & Grove Brook 29263/32845
Ridgeway 29118/32845
Blewbury & Harwell 28731/32845
Steventon & the Hanneys 28720/32845
Hendreds 28108/32845
Wantage Charlton (Worst) 27137/32845
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Deprivation in Wantage

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 Wantage. 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
Drayton (Best) 29686/32845
Wantage & Grove Brook 27343/32845
Wantage Charlton 27242/32845
Grove North 27102/32845
Kingston Bagpuize 26786/32845
Blewbury & Harwell 26322/32845
Hendreds 23995/32845
Steventon & the Hanneys 23064/32845
Ridgeway 22134/32845
Downlands (Worst) 21201/32845

Average rent in Wantage

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

Weekly Gross Pay and Hourly Pay in Wantage

If you are thinking of moving to Wantage, 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?