Ripon
City · 16,405 people live here · 7 areas
Check Local Score for Ripon as a whole: 78, very good, among the highest-scoring cities. 60 is typical for the country.
Summary · written from the figures for Ripon
Ripon still looks like the small cathedral city it is: terraced streets running down towards a market square, a grammar school with a long reputation, and a population whose average age sits a good six years above the national figure. This isn't a place of new-build estates or glass office blocks — it's older housing, older residents, and a pace that reflects both.
The practical picture is a mixed one, and worth sitting with rather than skimming. Ripon Grammar School posts a Progress 8 score of 0.72, which is strong by any measure, and Outwood Academy Ripon, Moorside Primary and Outwood Primary Academy Greystone all carry Good ratings — so a family settling here has solid options once you look past the one primary rated as requiring improvement. There's no rail station in the picture, which matters if your work depends on a direct line into Leeds or York; this is a driving city, or one served by its 87 local transport stops rather than trains. Housing reflects that self-containment too: terraced freeholds dominate the sales mix, prices are typically around £230,000, and that's roughly 11.5% below the wider North Yorkshire median — a city where a "For Sale" board usually means a modest terrace changing hands between local buyers rather than commuters priced out of somewhere bigger.
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Areas ranked overall
Areas are laid out roughly as they sit in Ripon, north at the top. Scores are out of 100; 60 is typical for the country.
High Common
75Ranked 1 of 7 by overall. Strongest on safety (75), weakest on food & drink (42).
Is Ripon a good place to live?
Ripon scores 78/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (79).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Ripon in Yorkshire and The Humber, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Ripon
Ripon still looks like the small cathedral city it is: terraced streets running down towards a market square, a grammar school with a long reputation, and a population whose average age sits a good six years above the national figure. This isn't a place of new-build estates or glass office blocks — it's older housing, older residents, and a pace that reflects both.
The practical picture is a mixed one, and worth sitting with rather than skimming. Ripon Grammar School posts a Progress 8 score of 0.72, which is strong by any measure, and Outwood Academy Ripon, Moorside Primary and Outwood Primary Academy Greystone all carry Good ratings — so a family settling here has solid options once you look past the one primary rated as requiring improvement. There's no rail station in the picture, which matters if your work depends on a direct line into Leeds or York; this is a driving city, or one served by its 87 local transport stops rather than trains. Housing reflects that self-containment too: terraced freeholds dominate the sales mix, prices are typically around £230,000, and that's roughly 11.5% below the wider North Yorkshire median — a city where a "For Sale" board usually means a modest terrace changing hands between local buyers rather than commuters priced out of somewhere bigger.
Green space is genuinely part of daily life here — 54 sites covering over 43 hectares, a ratio well above both the regional and national averages, so however you spend your weekend there's usually a park or riverside walk within reach rather than a drive away. The overall character grade sits at A, nightlife and health both score A too, which for a city this size and this age profile says more about quality than volume — good GP access and a handful of well-regarded places to eat, rather than a heaving strip. The one figure that runs against the grain is safety: an A grade overall, yet the crime rate here actually sits 24% above the North Yorkshire average, driven mostly by violence and anti-social behaviour categories rather than burglary or vehicle crime, which stay low. The direction of travel is described as improving, so it's worth reading as a place recovering rather than declining — but it's the detail that keeps this from being a uniformly easy story.