Woodley
Town · 28,356 residents
83Very 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: 43 per 1,000 people a year against 100
- 58% of residents live within five minutes of a park
- 100% of schools are rated Good or better by Ofsted
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Food & drink scores 32, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Woodley
Map outline: Official built-up area
Is Woodley a good place to live?
Woodley scores 83/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as very good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for safety (90) and environment (86).
It scores lowest on food & drink (32).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Woodley in South East, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Woodley
Woodley reads as solidly semi-detached England: red-brick estates, wide grass verges, cul-de-sacs that back onto playing fields rather than any high street of note. It's the kind of place you drive through on the way to somewhere with a postcard reputation and don't quite register — which is rather the point for the people who live here.
The practical picture is coherent rather than flashy. Earley Rail Station and Winnersh Triangle Rail Station both sit within reach for the commute into Reading and on to London, and with a median age of 42 this is a town of people who've settled rather than passed through — mortgages, school runs, a second car on the drive. Schooling is mixed in the way most towns are: St Dominic Savio Catholic Primary School carries an Outstanding rating, but it sits alongside a handful of academies with no published Ofsted result and one, Beechwood Primary, rated Requires Improvement, so the pattern rewards checking the specific catchment rather than assuming uniform quality. Housing leans heavily freehold, with semi-detached the dominant sale type — a For Sale board here most often means a family home changing hands within the family-buyer market, not a developer's block of flats; new-build activity is essentially nonexistent. At a median £450,000, prices sit close to the Wokingham borough average and slightly below it, and the five-year direction is described as improving even though the latest annual movement is a modest 2.2%.