Pontyberem
Village · 1,542 residents
64Good
Good · better than 7 in 10 villages
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 76, well above the typical 60
- Less recorded crime than is typical: 50 per 1,000 people a year against 99
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Infrastructure scores 33, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Pontyberem
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Pontyberem a good place to live?
Pontyberem scores 64/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for environment (76) and safety (73).
It scores lowest on infrastructure (33).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Pontyberem in Wales, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Pontyberem
Pontyberem sits along the valley roads of the old coalfield, terraces and semis stacked on the slopes above the Gwendraeth, the sort of place where you know the postman's name and the pub car park fills up on a match day. It's small enough that the school run and the shop queue are the same faces, and quiet enough that visitors sometimes mistake it for sleepy — it isn't unfriendly, just unhurried.
Housing here tells its own story: nearly all the recent sales are freehold semis and terraces, nothing new-build, and a median price of £140,000 that sits well below both the Welsh average and, more strikingly, almost 30% under the typical price across Carmarthenshire as a whole. That's a village where buying in doesn't require a London-sized deposit, though it also means you're not going to find much choice at the top end — this is a market of modest, settled family homes, not executive plots. There's one primary school in the village, Ysgol Gynradd Pontyberem, with Bancffosfelen also serving the area; Wales doesn't run an Ofsted-style grading, so you're judging these on reputation and community fit rather than a letter. The median age of 44.6 tells you this isn't a starter-home suburb — it's a place people settle into rather than pass through.
The numbers around safety are the one that needs unpacking rather than skimming past: on paper Pontyberem's overall crime rate looks strikingly higher than the Carmarthenshire average, but the raw count behind that is small — 23 incidents over the year in a village of 442 people — and violence and sexual offences make up close to half of it, a category that in small populations can be skewed heavily by a handful of incidents rather than a pattern of danger. The safety grade lands mid-table respectable rather than alarming, and the trend is flat, not worsening. Everything else about the place pulls in the other direction: air, noise, and general environment score about as well as anywhere in Wales, and the same is true for local health measures — this reads as a genuinely healthy place to live day to day, the crime figure aside.