Lincoln
City · 103,809 people live here · 15 areas
Check Local Score for Lincoln as a whole: 54, fair, better than 2 in 10 cities. 60 is typical for the country.
Summary · written from the figures for Lincoln
Lincoln's terraces do a lot of the talking here — red brick rows running down towards the cathedral quarter, university students filling the cheaper flats near the centre, and a steady trickle of first-time buyers drawn by prices that would barely cover a deposit further south. It's a compact, workaday city that wears its history (the cathedral, the steep old town) alongside a fairly ordinary retail high street, and it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.
The numbers behind the streets tell a consistent story: a median house price of £180,000 against a national figure of £281,000 puts Lincoln well down the affordability scale in the cheaper direction, and the city's own "grade_affordability" of A reflects that. Income and deprivation deciles sit in the middle of the national range rather than at either extreme, which lines up with what you'd expect from a mid-sized regional city rather than a boom town. If you're commuting by train, Lincoln Central is the one station of note, and with a median age of 33.8 — several years younger than the national 40.4 — this reads as a city with a working, studying population rather than a retirement one. Schooling is the softer patch in the picture: the average Ofsted rating across the city's 44 schools is towards "requires improvement," and both named secondaries in the data — The Priory City of Lincoln Academy and St Peter and St Paul Catholic Voluntary Academy — carry that rating along with negative Progress 8 scores. The Lincoln St Peter at Gowts Church of England Primary School stands out as Outstanding, so families do have options, but they're not everywhere.
Pick what matters to you and the areas reorder. Choose an area to see why it ranks where it does, then open its report. Or see the report for Lincoln as a whole, with every figure and the map.
What matters to you · pick up to three
Areas ranked overall
Areas are laid out roughly as they sit in Lincoln, north at the top. Scores are out of 100; 60 is typical for the country.
Carholme
65Ranked 1 of 15 by overall. Strongest on food & drink (84), weakest on schools (48).
Is Lincoln a good place to live?
Lincoln scores 54/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as fair — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (77) and affordability (72).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Lincoln in East Midlands, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Lincoln
Lincoln's terraces do a lot of the talking here — red brick rows running down towards the cathedral quarter, university students filling the cheaper flats near the centre, and a steady trickle of first-time buyers drawn by prices that would barely cover a deposit further south. It's a compact, workaday city that wears its history (the cathedral, the steep old town) alongside a fairly ordinary retail high street, and it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.
The numbers behind the streets tell a consistent story: a median house price of £180,000 against a national figure of £281,000 puts Lincoln well down the affordability scale in the cheaper direction, and the city's own "grade_affordability" of A reflects that. Income and deprivation deciles sit in the middle of the national range rather than at either extreme, which lines up with what you'd expect from a mid-sized regional city rather than a boom town. If you're commuting by train, Lincoln Central is the one station of note, and with a median age of 33.8 — several years younger than the national 40.4 — this reads as a city with a working, studying population rather than a retirement one. Schooling is the softer patch in the picture: the average Ofsted rating across the city's 44 schools is towards "requires improvement," and both named secondaries in the data — The Priory City of Lincoln Academy and St Peter and St Paul Catholic Voluntary Academy — carry that rating along with negative Progress 8 scores. The Lincoln St Peter at Gowts Church of England Primary School stands out as Outstanding, so families do have options, but they're not everywhere.