Plymouth
City · 264,707 people live here · 88 areas
Check Local Score for Plymouth as a whole: 62, good, better than 6 in 10 cities. 60 is typical for the country.
Summary · written from the figures for Plymouth
Terraces climb the hills in long Victorian rows, broken up by pockets of postwar semis and the odd tower block near the water — this is a working city with a naval history, not a retirement postcard, and the streets around the centre still feel shaped by the dockyard rather than by tourism.
The practical picture is decent rather than dazzling. Six rail stations serve the city, with Plymouth Rail Station as the main hub, so getting to Exeter or up to London doesn't require a car, even if the roads themselves carry a lot of the daily load given how dense the population is here compared with the national average. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a clean story: Devonport High School for Girls posts strong results and Hyde Park Junior School is rated Good, but sitting close by is Hyde Park Infants', rated Inadequate — a reminder that Ofsted quality varies street by street rather than city-wide, and the average across the 108 schools lands almost exactly on the national norm. Housing is where Plymouth's case is easiest to make: a median price of £222,000 is barely above the city's own long-run average and sits well under both the regional figure and the national one, and terraced freeholds dominate the market, meaning a typical For Sale board here is a Victorian terrace you own outright rather than a leasehold flat.
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Areas ranked overall
Areas are laid out roughly as they sit in Plymouth, north at the top. Scores are out of 100; 60 is typical for the country.
Estover
80Ranked 1 of 88 by overall. Strongest on property market (76), weakest on food & drink (39).
Is Plymouth a good place to live?
Plymouth scores 62/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (71).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Plymouth in South West, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Plymouth
Terraces climb the hills in long Victorian rows, broken up by pockets of postwar semis and the odd tower block near the water — this is a working city with a naval history, not a retirement postcard, and the streets around the centre still feel shaped by the dockyard rather than by tourism.
The practical picture is decent rather than dazzling. Six rail stations serve the city, with Plymouth Rail Station as the main hub, so getting to Exeter or up to London doesn't require a car, even if the roads themselves carry a lot of the daily load given how dense the population is here compared with the national average. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a clean story: Devonport High School for Girls posts strong results and Hyde Park Junior School is rated Good, but sitting close by is Hyde Park Infants', rated Inadequate — a reminder that Ofsted quality varies street by street rather than city-wide, and the average across the 108 schools lands almost exactly on the national norm. Housing is where Plymouth's case is easiest to make: a median price of £222,000 is barely above the city's own long-run average and sits well under both the regional figure and the national one, and terraced freeholds dominate the market, meaning a typical For Sale board here is a Victorian terrace you own outright rather than a leasehold flat.
Green space is genuinely part of daily life — nearly 700 hectares of it spread across hundreds of sites, more per head than the regional average, so a free afternoon tends to mean a walk rather than a shopping trip. The tension worth sitting with is safety: the overall grade profile is solidly B+ across affordability, connectivity, environment, health and housing, but safety alone slips to a B, and the direction of travel is described as worsening even as house prices improve — violence and sexual offences account for the largest single share of recorded crime, well ahead of anti-social behaviour and criminal damage. That's the one grade that doesn't match the rest of the pattern, and it's worth weighing against the affordability that makes the rest of the picture attractive.