The Borough
Neighbourhood · 9,294 residents
54Fair
Fair · better than 3 in 10 suburbs
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 66 places to eat and drink
- 100% of schools are rated Good or better by Ofsted
- 3 GP practices within a short walk
Check before you view
- Flood risk: 73% of the area is in the highest flood zone, so check the street
- Prices are high for local incomes: affordability scores 26, where 60 is typical
- Safety scores 28, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around The Borough
Map outline: Approximate — no official boundary exists for this neighbourhood
Is The Borough a good place to live?
The Borough scores 54/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as fair — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for food & drink (99) and schools (78).
It scores lowest on affordability (26) and safety (28).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for The Borough in London, each measured against the national average.
Summary of The Borough
Converted warehouses, glass-fronted flats above kebab shops and wine bars, and a constant churn of commuters cutting through on their way somewhere else — that's the visual grammar of The Borough. It's dense, it's central, and it doesn't pretend to be a village.
The numbers back up the feel: over 15,000 people per square kilometre, nearly six times the London average, packed into streets that still have Georgian bones. The median age of 29 tells you this isn't a place people retire to — it's a launchpad, full of professionals a few years into their careers who want London Bridge or Borough Underground on their doorstep rather than a garden.
That transport access is the whole story of who lives here. With Borough Underground, Southwark, Elephant & Castle and London Bridge all within reach, this is about as connected as London gets outside Zone 1 itself — the B+ connectivity grade undersells it. And the schools are genuinely strong: Charles Dickens Primary School holds an Outstanding rating, alongside a cluster of other well-regarded primaries, which matters if you're the kind of professional who commutes hard but still wants a good local option for the school run. Housing, though, tells a different story to the one you'd expect from all that polish. This is leasehold-flat territory almost exclusively — 70 of 79 recent sales were flats, and leasehold accounts for the overwhelming majority of tenure. A For Sale board here means a flat above a shop or in a converted block, not a house with a garden, and at a median of nearly £470,000 you're paying handsomely for the postcode even though prices have actually dipped slightly over the past year and sit just under the Southwark average.