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The best place to live in the UK is a contentious topic. If you ask most Londoners, they’d say where they live is best, of course. But you can’t argue with the data.
The Sunday Times has just released its annual ranking of Britain’s best places to live, and one London borough took the cake. The paper did it a little differently this year. Instead of asking judges to choose, the paper looked at data from eight different sources, looking at the crime rates, quality of schools, and GP satisfaction rates. It also analysed the number of listed buildings, green spaces and community-listed companies.
According to the Sunday Times, the UK’s best place to live is... Richmond. But you better be pretty wealthy, because the average house price in the area is £748,000. The paper said that Richmond ‘has it all’, including ‘great schools, 80 per cent GP satisfaction and the lowest crime rate in London’, but it did acknowledge that house prices are 42 percent higher than the London average. Richmond has taken over from North Berwick in East Lothian, Scotland which topped the list last year.
In the UK’s top three, the London borough was followed by Cheltenham and Stroud, both in the south east.
Other London areas scoring well in the ranking were Merton, Sutton, Wandsworth, and Kingston, in fourth, eighth, 17th and 18th, respectively.
In December Richmond upon Thames was also named the happiest London borough by Rightmove’s Happy at Home Index 2024, thanks to its green spaces, affluent neighbourhoods and artsy hubs.
London has been named the world’s top destination for 2025 by TripAdvisor.
London’s two best pubs have been crowned by the Telegraph – and they’re pretty good shouts.
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