Milton Keynes
City · 287,042 residents
67Good
Good · better than 8 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
- 77% of residents live within five minutes of a park
- 96% of homes can get full-fibre broadband
- Property market scores 70, 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
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Milton Keynes
Bletchley63Newport Pagnell75Shenley Church End70Olney79Woburn Sands75New Bradwell67Linford Wharf56Upper Weald72Willen68Wavendon Gate59Shenley Brook End65Emerson Valley63
See all 68 in the guide ↓Map outline: Council boundary
Is Milton Keynes a good place to live?
Milton Keynes scores 67/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (85) and infrastructure (71).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Milton Keynes in South East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes announces itself through its roads before anything else — wide grid squares, roundabouts instead of junctions, and a skyline of low-rise business parks giving way to the redbrick estates that spread out from each village-named district. It's a city built rather than grown, and that engineered quality still shows: the grid softens into surprising pockets of park and water, but the overall impression is of a place designed for cars and cyclists first, wanderers second.
The practical case for living here rests on the trains and the grid. Milton Keynes Central is the one that matters for commuters into London, but Wolverton, Woburn Sands, Bow Brickhill and Fenny Stratford give outlying neighbourhoods their own stations too, which is unusual for a city this size and makes the working week considerably easier if you're based away from the centre. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a uniform strength — Tickford Park and Willen Primary both carry Good ratings, and Brooklands Farm Primary and Watling Academy sit at the Outstanding end if you can get near them, but the city-wide average Ofsted score is unremarkable and secondary progress scores run slightly below the national norm. Housing follows the grid logic too: detached homes and freeholds dominate sales, new-build stock is negligible despite the city's young age, and at a median of £335,000 you're paying almost exactly the national average — this is a city that never quite became expensive, sitting close to its own unitary authority benchmark rather than pulling ahead of it.