Bowmans
Suburb · 7,279 residents
72Very good
Very good · better than 9 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
- Less recorded crime than is typical: 48 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- Environment scores 81, well above the typical 60
- 5 GP practices within a short walk
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Bowmans
Map outline: Approximate — no official boundary exists for this neighbourhood
Is Bowmans a good place to live?
Bowmans scores 72/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (81) and environment (81).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Bowmans in South East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Bowmans
Bowmans has the look of a place built in one confident go: terraced and semi-detached streets, hedges trimmed, cars that lean newer than average, and very little passing trade — this is somewhere people live rather than somewhere people pass through. The density is high for a suburb, but it doesn't read as cramped so much as compact and settled, the kind of place where neighbours recognise each other's cars.
The practical picture here is unusually coherent. Median age sits at 41.9, a good decade past the first-time-buyer rush, and that tallies with what's on the street: mostly terraced houses, overwhelmingly owned outright rather than leased, the sort of freehold-heavy stock that doesn't turn over often — turnover here runs below both the regional and national average. Schooling has a genuine outlier in it: Dartford Grammar School carries an Outstanding rating and a progress score well above the national norm, and while it sits alongside other local schools with more middling or unrated outcomes, its presence alone changes the calculation for any household with secondary-age children. Housing cost is the other half of the story — a median price well above the national figure and above the regional one too, and noticeably higher than Dartford district as a whole, so the For Sale boards here are asking a premium for the postcode, not just the square footage.
Green space is modest rather than generous — a handful of smaller spaces rather than one big park to anchor a weekend — which fits a suburb that seems to orient more around home and garden than around organised leisure. Nightlife is the one area that breaks the pattern noticeably: everything else about Bowmans reads as comfortably above average, safety included, but the evening economy grade sits well below the rest, suggesting you're looking at a quiet dinner-at-home or drive-elsewhere suburb rather than one with its own going-out scene. Crime overall is low for the area's income and affluence level — violence and anti-social behaviour top the list, as they do almost everywhere, but the volumes are modest against a population of this size, and the safety trend has stayed flat rather than drifting either way.