Bath

Honey-coloured terraces climb the hillsides here in tiers, and the streets around them fill with a mix of students, tourists trailing cameras, and professionals who've swapped a London postcode for something with a view. It's a compact, dense city dressed as a market town, and it reads as one everywhere you look — narrow pavements, packed independent shops, buildings that all seem to answer to the same planning officer.

The practical picture is where Bath earns its reputation. Bath Spa Rail Station puts London within easy striking distance, which explains why the median age sits at 35.2 — younger than the national and regional norms — full of people who commute rather than retire here. Schools are a mixed bag worth reading carefully: Hayesfield Girls School and Beechen Cliff School both post solid progress scores, and Widcombe Infant School and St Andrew's Church School carry Good ratings, but the city's outstanding primary, Swainswick Church School, sits outside the centre rather than in it — so an Outstanding label isn't guaranteed on your doorstep even though good schools generally are. Housing leans terraced and freehold, and at a £425,000 median it runs 8% above the wider Bath and North East Somerset figure and well past the national £281,000 marker — this is a decile 7 area for deprivation, comfortably on the better-off side of the ledger, and the price tag reflects that a For Sale board here is selling scarcity and stone facades as much as square footage.

Green space is generous — 235 sites covering over 320 hectares, well above the national average per head — and it's the kind of city where a walk substitutes for a gym membership. The flip side worth sitting with is safety: the "worsening" trend on crime isn't noise, and the crime rate here runs 44% above the parent authority's average, with violence and sexual offences and anti-social behaviour topping the list. It's the one grade that breaks the pattern in an otherwise strong set — health, environment and nightlife all score highly, safety lags behind. That combination — lovely surroundings, good amenities, a crime trend heading the wrong way — is the trade-off to actually weigh, not just note.