Littlemore in South East has a Check Local Score of 26/100 (modest), drawn from official data on safety, schools, transport, housing, amenities and the local environment, each measured against the national average — a score of 60 is typical for the country.
Littlemore's streets are a mix of semi-detached houses and terraces, the kind of housing stock that suggests families and sharers rather than a transient rental crowd — and at 55 sales sampled, most of what moves here is exactly that: solid, freehold, three-bed semis rather than flats or new-builds. There's a settled, slightly worn feel to it, the kind of suburb that's lived-in rather than styled for visitors.
The practical picture is mixed. With 34 transport stops but no rail station named for the area, this is bus-and-car territory more than a commuter-line suburb, and at a median age of 35.8 — younger than both the regional and national averages — it reads as a place with working households rather than retirees. Schools are a genuine mixed bag: St John Fisher Catholic Primary holds a Good rating, but The Oxford Academy, the local secondary, is rated Requires Improvement with a progress 8 score of -0.72, well below where you'd want it. That gap between a solid primary option and a struggling secondary is worth sitting with if you've got older children coming through.
Green space is there in quantity if not scale — 16 pockets of it, though at under 8 hectares total it's fragmented rather than sprawling, more pocket parks than a single big draw. Housing sits below Oxford's median by around 15%, which is the area's clearest selling point if you're priced out of the city centre proper; a semi here running notably above the national semi-detached median still comes in well under what the same house would cost elsewhere in the district. That affordability gap is doing a lot of the work in explaining who ends up here. The number that cuts against the grain, though, is safety — crime is trending in the wrong direction, and violence and sexual offences alone account for nearly 44% of all recorded crime in the past year, a concentration in one category that's hard to ignore even against an otherwise ordinary-looking set of local grades. Health outcomes score poorly too, which sits oddly alongside decent-enough housing and connectivity ratings.
This adds up to a suburb that suits people prioritising space and price over polish — households who've done the sum on Oxford's wider property market and landed here deliberately, accepting a secondary school that needs watching and a safety trend that needs asking about, in exchange for a semi-detached house at a price the city centre simply doesn't offer anymore.
Data last updated: 15 August 2026
Pick another area to line them up side by side — the verdict, both Check Local Scores, and what actually separates them.