Billingley

Billingley is the kind of place where terraced rows and semis line up along quiet streets and nobody's in a hurry — a small former colliery-belt village rather than a commuter dormitory, and it looks it: modest brick housing, low turnover, the sort of quiet that comes from people staying put rather than passing through.

Money-wise, this is one of the more affordable corners of Yorkshire and The Humber, and by some distance one of the more affordable corners of the country full stop — a median house price around £140,000 sits well under half the national figure, and even undercuts its own parent authority, Barnsley, by a quarter. Sales here skew terraced and freehold almost without exception, so a For Sale board on a Billingley street is telling you: modest outlay, no ground rent complications, and a buyer's market rather than a bidding war. That affordability comes with a trade-off, though — this sits near the bottom of the national income and deprivation deciles, which shapes everything else on this list, from the housing stock to the schools grade. Transport is thin: six stops serve the village and there's no rail station named in the immediate picture, so this reads as a car-dependent spot rather than one for a rail commute into Barnsley or Sheffield.

Crime is the one number worth sitting with. Total incidents over the year land at 135, and violent and sexual offences make up close to a third of that — a share that would be notable anywhere, and here it's the standout line against an otherwise calmer backdrop of theft, criminal damage and the odd vehicle crime. Against Barnsley's own average, Billingley's crime rate actually runs noticeably higher, even though the borough itself isn't a low-crime area nationally — worth knowing rather than a cause for alarm, since the "safety" grade Billingley receives still sits mid-pack rather than at the bottom, and the trend is flat rather than worsening. Green space is generous relative to population density here — the village is far less densely packed than the regional or national average — which softens the picture: this doesn't feel like a hemmed-in place, whatever the crime breakdown says on paper.