Clifton
Village · 3,078 residents
69Good
Good · better than 8 in 10 villages
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: 56 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- Property market scores 71, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Flood risk: 11% of the area is in the highest flood zone, so check the street
- Food & drink scores 22, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Clifton a good place to live?
Clifton scores 69/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (81) and property market (71).
It scores lowest on food & drink (22).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Clifton in East of England, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Clifton
Clifton reads as detached houses on generous plots, hedges rather than fences, and the kind of quiet that comes from being a village rather than a through-route. Nine out of every ten sales here go to freehold buyers of detached or semi-detached homes, and with a median age over 45, this isn't a place dominated by young renters cycling through house-shares — it's a place people settle into.
The housing picture and the school picture tell a consistent story about who ends up here. Detached homes sell for a median of £545,000, well above the £420,000 national figure for the same type, and semi-detached houses fetch £395,000 against a national £273,000 — this is a village priced for people already established rather than first-time buyers. Clifton All Saints Academy carries a Good Ofsted rating for primary-age children, while secondary-age pupils typically move on to Samuel Whitbread Academy, whose progress scores sit a touch below the national average — worth a look if you have a teenager, less relevant if your children are younger. There's no rail station listed for the village itself, so this reads as a driving village rather than a commuter-belt one, and the fourteen local transport stops suggest bus links rather than a fast run into London.
Green space is modest in scale — nine plots but only 3.6 hectares between them, so this isn't a place with a big park to anchor a weekend, more a village where gardens and the wider Bedfordshire countryside do that work instead. The overall grade pattern is where Clifton gets interesting: strong marks for housing, safety, connectivity and the environment, a solid B+ overall, but health drops to a C+, the one grade that doesn't fit the rest of the picture and worth a mention if local healthcare access matters to you. Safety itself is graded A and rated as flat over time, meaning stable rather than improving or worsening — though the crime rate here runs markedly higher than the Central Bedfordshire average, driven mostly by violence and sexual offences and vehicle crime rather than burglary or theft, which stay low. It's a reminder that a low raw crime count (41 incidents) can still sit well above a small rural authority's average simply because the baseline is so low.