Sunderland
City · 274,170 residents
60Good
Good · better than 4 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
- Affordability scores 79, well above the typical 60
- 58% of residents live within five minutes of a park
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Sunderland
Washington60Houghton-le-Spring66Hetton-le-Hole71Pallion50Plains Farm63Success61Burnside63Fulwell70Donwell45Ayre's Quay62Bishopwearmouth51Seaburn71
See all 68 in the guide ↓Map outline: Council boundary
Is Sunderland a good place to live?
Sunderland scores 60/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for affordability (79) and environment (76).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Sunderland in North East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Sunderland
Terraced streets run the length of Sunderland, red brick and bay windows repeating past corner shops and the odd Metro stop, and the whole picture reads as a working city that's never pretended to be anything else. This isn't an area chasing a rebrand — it's settled, a little worn at the edges in places, and quietly confident about what it offers.
The numbers back up that sense of an ordinary, functioning city rather than a boom town. A median house price around £135,000 sits well below both the regional figure and the national average, and against Sunderland's own metropolitan benchmark it's tracking almost exactly in line — this is not a place where prices have run away in one direction or another. Terraced homes dominate what's for sale, nearly all of it freehold, which on the ground means rows of solid, ownable starter homes rather than new-build estates or flats chasing yield — new-build makes up next to nothing of recent sales. Schools are a mixed bag rather than a uniform story: East Herrington Primary Academy and Farringdon Academy both carry Good ratings, Mill Hill Nursery School is rated Outstanding, but Farringdon Community Academy secondary is marked as Requires Improvement, and the city's overall Ofsted average sits close to the national norm rather than above it. Getting around is handled by the Tyne and Wear Metro rather than mainline rail — South Hylton, University, Millfield and Park Lane stations all feature — so daily life here runs on the Metro network and a dense web of bus stops rather than a commute into a big station concourse.