Worthing

Worthing's high streets have a settled, faintly retro feel — independent cafes and charity shops sitting alongside the seafront's Victorian terraces, with a population skewing a little older than the national average and a density that tells you this is a proper town, not a village by the sea. It attracts people who want the coast without the Brighton price tag or the Brighton crowds, and that trade-off shows in almost everything else about the place.

The practical picture here is unusually joined-up for a town this size: five separate stations — Worthing, West Worthing, East Worthing, Durrington-on-Sea and Goring-by-Sea — mean that wherever you land, a train into the wider region isn't far off, and with 559 local transport stops the bus network fills in the gaps well enough that a car starts to feel optional rather than essential. Schools are a genuinely mixed bag: Durrington High School and English Martyrs Catholic Primary both carry Good ratings, and Davison Church of England High School for Girls holds an Outstanding, but the borough's average Ofsted score sits close to the national mean rather than above it, and Durrington Infant School is rated as Requiring Improvement — so it's worth checking the specific catchment rather than assuming uniform quality. Housing is dominated by freehold flats and semis, and at a median of £342,000 — barely above the £330,000 figure for the wider Worthing district and close to the national median — this is a market that hasn't run away from itself; the five-year trend is recorded as improving even though the most recent year's movement was modest.