Wilmslow
Town · 24,823 residents
81Very good
Very good · better than 9 in 10 towns
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- Less recorded crime than is typical: 50 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- 62% of residents live within five minutes of a park
- 4 GP practices within a short walk
Check before you view
- Food & drink scores 36, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Wilmslow
Finney Green56Lacey Green67HilltopCarrwood65Pownall Park64Row-of-Trees53Stanneyland62Wilmslow Park54Dean Row55Alderley Edge71Handforth59Prestbury76
See all 16 in the guide ↓Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Wilmslow a good place to live?
Wilmslow scores 81/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (86) and environment (78).
It scores lowest on food & drink (36).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Wilmslow in North West, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Wilmslow
Wilmslow's high street runs to independent boutiques, coffee shops with proper espresso machines, and estate agents' windows full of detached houses well north of the national asking price — the kind of parade that tells you the money here is older and more settled than flashy. You'll notice the cars before anything else, then the number of people who look like they work from home three days a week and commute into Manchester or London the other two.
That commuting pattern is easy to picture once you look at the pieces together: Wilmslow Rail Station sits in the town centre with direct services that make London genuinely dayable, and with a median age of 44 this isn't a graduate-heavy suburb but one where people have arrived, settled, and stayed. Schooling backs that up — Gorsey Bank Primary carries an Outstanding rating, Wilmslow High School serves the secondary-age population at real scale, and the general standard across the area's schools sits comfortably above the national average. None of it comes cheap: the median house price of £450,000 is a good 60% above the wider Cheshire East figure and well above the national median, detached houses here trade at nearly double the national norm, and freehold ownership dominates. A "For Sale" board on most streets is advertising a family house bought outright, not a stepping-stone flat.
The green space is real rather than decorative — almost a hundred hectares of it spread across dozens of named plots, so the weekend shape here tends to be a walk somewhere, then lunch at one of the town's restaurants, which lean toward the same comfortable, unshowy quality as the shops. Health provision reads well against national benchmarks too, and the broadband is solid — full fibre reaches over three-quarters of properties, which matters if home-working is part of the appeal. The one grade that breaks the pattern is nightlife, which sits distinctly average against everything else's outperformance — this is not a town that comes alive after 10pm, and if that's what you want, you'll be getting the train into Manchester for it, not staying local.