Baffins
Suburb · 6,029 residents
49Fair
Fair · better than 1 in 10 suburbs
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 95% of residents live within five minutes of a park
Check before you view
- Flood risk: 32% of the area is in the highest flood zone, so check the street
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Food & drink scores 19, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Baffins
Map outline: Approximate — no official boundary exists for this neighbourhood
Is Baffins a good place to live?
Baffins scores 49/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as fair — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (74).
It scores lowest on food & drink (19) and health (30).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Baffins in South East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Baffins
Terraced Victorian and Edwardian streets run block after block here, packed tightly enough that the population density sits well above both the regional and national average — this is dense, walkable Portsmouth suburb rather than spread-out commuter belt, and the rows of bay-fronted houses with wheelie bins out front tell you this is a place people settle into rather than pass through.
The housing stock backs that up: nine in ten sales are terraced or semi-detached, bought freehold rather than leasehold, and a For Sale board here almost always means a two-or-three-bed Victorian terrace rather than a new-build flat. At a median of around £301,000, prices sit close to the Portsmouth-wide figure but noticeably below the South East regional average, and the market has been essentially flat rather than racing anywhere. Schools are a mixed picture rather than a settled one — Westover Primary School holds a Good rating, but the area's overall school grade lags its housing and safety scores, so it's worth checking the catchment for your specific street rather than assuming. With fifteen transport stops but a transport grade that only reaches C+, this reads as a place for local journeys and bus routes more than a fast rail commute, which fits a median age of 42.6 — settled households and older residents rather than a young professional turnover crowd.
Green space is genuinely part of daily life, with twenty separate spaces totalling over 57 hectares — enough that most streets have something within reach for a dog walk or a Sunday kickabout, even without a single flagship park to name. Health provision is the soft spot in an otherwise solid picture: the area scores only a C on health against strong marks for environment and safety, an odd note worth registering rather than ignoring. Crime is worth being straight about too — violence and sexual offences make up nearly half of all recorded incidents, well above what you'd expect from the share of shoplifting or anti-social behaviour beneath it, though the overall rate is only marginally higher than Portsmouth's own average and the trend here is described as improving, not worsening.