West Hampstead
Neighbourhood · 10,506 residents
55Good
Good · 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
- 62 places to eat and drink
- Schools scores 73, well above the typical 60
Check before you view
- Prices are high for local incomes: affordability scores 17, where 60 is typical
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around West Hampstead
Map outline: Approximate — electoral ward boundary, used as the nearest surveyed shape
Is West Hampstead a good place to live?
West Hampstead scores 55/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for food & drink (76) and schools (73).
It scores lowest on affordability (17).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for West Hampstead in London, each measured against the national average.
Summary of West Hampstead
West Hampstead announces itself in its stations before anything else: within a few streets you get the Overground, the Underground, and a Thameslink platform, all sharing the same name, which tells you most of what you need to know about who ends up living here — people who work in central London but didn't want to live in it. The high street backs this up, all flat-fronted Victorian terraces converted into flats above cafés and estate agents, dense and a little scruffy at the edges rather than polished.
That transport knot is really the whole story of the practical side of life here. With three rail options and a stack of bus stops besides, a commuter can be at Farringdon or the City in well under half an hour, which is exactly why a flat here costs what it does. Schools are the area's quiet strength — Kingsgate Primary School carries an Outstanding rating, and it's joined by two more Outstanding-rated primaries in St Eugene de Mazenod and St Mary's Kilburn, an unusually strong cluster for a patch this size, even if the secondary option, Hampstead School, is rated Good rather than Outstanding and shows a negative Progress 8 score worth knowing about if you're planning that far ahead. The housing stock matches the commuter logic: this is overwhelmingly flats, five out of six sales, and leasehold rather than freehold by a wide margin, so a "For Sale" board here is almost always a lease negotiation, not a freehold purchase, and the £645,000 median sits close to Camden's borough figure but comfortably above the London region as a whole.