Dove Bank
Suburb · 1,473 residents
67Good
Good · better than 8 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
- Environment scores 87, well above the typical 60
- Affordability scores 74, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Health scores 32, below the typical 60
- Food & drink scores 32, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Dove Bank
Map outline: Approximate — no official boundary exists for this neighbourhood
Is Dove Bank a good place to live?
Dove Bank scores 67/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (87) and affordability (74).
It scores lowest on food & drink (32) and health (32).
Safety isn't scored here: street-level police data for the area is incomplete, so the overall score leaves it out.
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Dove Bank in North West, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Dove Bank
Dove Bank looks like a lot of outer Bolton: rows of semis and terraces built for mill workers and their descendants, a housing stock that's changed hands more than it's changed shape, and streets that read as settled rather than aspirational. You won't find glass-fronted flats or new-build cul-de-sacs here — this is a place people move into and stay, not one that's reinventing itself.
The numbers back up that read of stability. A median house price of £190,000 sits well under the national figure and roughly in line with Bolton as a whole, and semi-detached leasehold homes dominate the sales here — the kind of property that suits a first-time buyer or someone trading up modestly rather than a developer's showhome. With just one school logged locally, Little Lever School (rated Good, with a solid Progress 8 score) is the notable secondary option, and St Teresa's RC Primary carries the same Good rating for younger children — reasonable foundations if you're planning to stay long enough to see kids through both stages. Six transport stops serve the area, which points to a place built around buses and short local journeys rather than a rail-commuter crowd heading into Manchester or central Bolton.
Green space per head runs a little below the regional average, and the area doesn't show much in the way of restaurants or nightlife in what's on record — the overall nightlife and health grades sit in the middle of the pack, suggesting Dove Bank is a place you come home to rather than one you go out in. That said, connectivity is a genuine strength: full fibre reaches the large majority of properties, which matters more than it used to for anyone working from home. The crime picture looks unusually clean on paper — a single recorded incident in the past year — though the comparison against Bolton's own low borough-wide rate shows crime running higher than the parent area's average, so treat the raw total as a small-sample quirk rather than a verdict either way.