City · 159,624 people live here · 71 areas
Check Local Score for Newport as a whole: 52, fair, better than 1 in 10 cities. 60 is typical for the country.
Summary · written from the figures for Newport
Newport's terraces run in long red-brick rows down towards the river, punctuated by the sort of retail parks and roundabouts that mark a city built for through-traffic as much as for living in. It's a working city rather than a polished one — the kind of place where you'll see tracksuits and hi-vis on the same street as pushchairs, and nobody's dressed for anyone else's benefit.
The practical picture holds together better than the crime headline might suggest. Yes, violence and sexual offences account for the largest single share of incidents, but the safety grade actually comes out strong overall, and the trend line is described as improving rather than static — worth knowing before you let one category dominate the read. Three rail stations serve the city, with Newport (S Wales) the obvious hub for anyone commuting into Cardiff or further along the line, and with a median age of 38.8 — a few years younger than the Welsh average — this reads as a city of people still building rather than settled into retirement. Schooling is broad rather than deep: 62 schools across the city, including Welsh-medium provision at Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd and church-school options like St. Gabriel's R.C., though Estyn ratings aren't broken out here, so you'd want to visit rather than rely on a badge.
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 Newport as a whole, with every figure and the map.
Areas are laid out roughly as they sit in Newport, north at the top. Scores are out of 100; 60 is typical for the country.
Ranked 1 of 71 by overall. Strongest on schools (85), weakest on food & drink (35).
Newport scores 52/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as fair — 60 is typical for the country.
No topic reaches "very good" (70+); its best is property market (68).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Newport in Wales, each measured against the national average.
Newport's terraces run in long red-brick rows down towards the river, punctuated by the sort of retail parks and roundabouts that mark a city built for through-traffic as much as for living in. It's a working city rather than a polished one — the kind of place where you'll see tracksuits and hi-vis on the same street as pushchairs, and nobody's dressed for anyone else's benefit.
The practical picture holds together better than the crime headline might suggest. Yes, violence and sexual offences account for the largest single share of incidents, but the safety grade actually comes out strong overall, and the trend line is described as improving rather than static — worth knowing before you let one category dominate the read. Three rail stations serve the city, with Newport (S Wales) the obvious hub for anyone commuting into Cardiff or further along the line, and with a median age of 38.8 — a few years younger than the Welsh average — this reads as a city of people still building rather than settled into retirement. Schooling is broad rather than deep: 62 schools across the city, including Welsh-medium provision at Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd and church-school options like St. Gabriel's R.C., though Estyn ratings aren't broken out here, so you'd want to visit rather than rely on a badge.
Housing tells a story of modest, steady value. A typical sale here sits close to £222,500 — a touch below the Welsh average and almost exactly in line with what the parent council area itself commands — and the market's been drifting upward gently rather than sharply. Terraced houses dominate the sales ledger, freehold is the overwhelming norm, and new-build stock is almost nonexistent, so a "for sale" board here usually means an older house with its own front door and no ground rent to worry about. Detached and semi-detached properties both sell for noticeably more than the Welsh norm, which suggests the bigger family homes carry a local premium even as the terraces keep things affordable at the entry end.
Green space is where Newport quietly overperforms — over a thousand hectares of it, spread across more than 350 named spaces, which is a lot of park for a city this size. Council tax at band D sits above both the Welsh median and the figure charged by the wider county area, a detail worth weighing against the affordability grade, which otherwise reads favourably. Full-fibre broadband reaches the large majority of homes, so working from a back bedroom isn't a gamble here. What you get, overall, is a city that's solidly average-to-good on paper — decile 5 for deprivation, meaning it sits right in the middle nationally within Wales — but with real variation street to street: some pockets feel comfortable and green, others carry the weight of the crime figures more visibly. It suits people who want space, a workable commute, and don't need a curated high street to feel at home. It suits less well anyone who wants a quiet, uneventful neighbourhood on every single street, because here that's a postcode-by-postcode question, not a citywide guarantee.
Data last updated: 19 October 2026
Pick another area to line them up side by side — the verdict, both Check Local Scores, and what actually separates them.