Lincoln
City · 103,809 residents
54Fair
Fair · better than 2 in 10 cities
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 77, well above the typical 60
- Affordability scores 72, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Flood risk: 14% of the area is in the highest flood zone, so check the street
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Lincoln
Boultham Moor43Boultham49Boultham, New47Bunkers Hill52Carholme65Bracebridge Low Fields59Ermine Estate53New Boultham48Bracebridge53St. Giles48St Catherines47Swanpool56
See all 23 in the guide ↓Map outline: Council boundary
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.