County ranking
Best places to live in Gloucestershire
30 towns ranked by overall liveability score, from official UK data.
36 towns in Gloucestershire clear our data thresholds: a population over 3,000 and real scores in 8 or more of 9 categories. The top 30 are ranked below. Stoke Gifford takes first place with 74/100, putting five points between it and Cheltenham on 69. Six of them score 65 or better, something about one in eight comparable UK towns manages: Stoke Gifford (74), Cheltenham (69) and Prestbury (Cheltenham) (69), among others.
Gloucestershire as a whole runs 3 points above the national norm: a median of 57/100 across its 36 qualifying towns, against 54/100 for comparable UK towns. The top five span £326,250 in Cheltenham to £426,000 in Prestbury (Cheltenham) on median house price. There is a sharp drop after first, from 74 down to 69, the biggest single step in the table. Category-by-category detail is on the pages for Stoke Gifford, Cheltenham and Prestbury (Cheltenham).
| # | Town | Score | Strongest categories | Population | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stoke Gifford | 74 | Transport 75 Healthcare 64 | 4,480 | £358,750 |
| 2 | Cheltenham | 69 | Transport 81 Lifestyle 80 | 109,060 | £326,250 |
| 3 | Prestbury (Cheltenham) | 69 | Healthcare 61 Transport 63 | 4,123 | £426,000 |
| 4 | Bradley Stoke | 68 | Schools 72 Healthcare 66 | 25,246 | £327,500 |
| 5 | Kingswood and Fishponds | 66 | Transport 78 Schools 79 | 152,970 | £326,500 |
| 6 | Gloucester | 65 | Healthcare 76 Transport 77 | 107,271 | £248,000 |
| 7 | Filton | 64 | Transport 77 Lifestyle 77 | 11,612 | £326,000 |
| 8 | Stroud | 63 | Transport 73 Healthcare 54 | 22,985 | £325,000 |
| 9 | Chipping Sodbury | 62 | Schools 63 Lifestyle 57 | 7,650 | £350,000 |
| 10 | Quedgeley and Hardwicke | 62 | Schools 66 Transport 58 | 14,040 | £255,000 |
| 11 | Churchdown | 61 | Schools 56 Lifestyle 54 | 13,194 | £280,000 |
| 12 | Tutshill and Sedbury | 59 | Broadband 95 Transport 47 | 3,894 | £330,000 |
| 13 | Bishop's Cleeve | 58 | Transport 53 Healthcare 48 | 9,870 | £335,000 |
| 14 | Frampton Cotterell and Winterbourne | 58 | Transport 52 Schools 52 | 14,419 | £410,000 |
| 15 | Thornbury | 58 | Healthcare 57 Transport 54 | 13,641 | £330,000 |
| 16 | Yate | 58 | Schools 63 Healthcare 57 | 30,022 | £290,000 |
| 17 | Cam | 57 | Transport 54 Healthcare 42 | 7,721 | £307,500 |
| 18 | Leonard Stanley and King's Stanley | 57 | Broadband 98 Transport 55 | 3,045 | £335,000 |
| 19 | Northway | 57 | Broadband 92 Transport 51 | 5,013 | £245,542 |
| 20 | Stonehouse (Stroud) | 57 | Healthcare 58 Transport 57 | 8,802 | £312,000 |
| 21 | Wotton-under-Edge | 57 | Healthcare 55 Lifestyle 52 | 5,085 | £326,250 |
| 22 | Dursley | 56 | Healthcare 59 Transport 51 | 7,597 | £277,500 |
| 23 | Tewkesbury | 56 | Lifestyle 52 Healthcare 47 | 13,849 | £271,500 |
| 24 | Cirencester | 55 | Lifestyle 68 Healthcare 55 | 18,215 | £340,000 |
| 25 | Cinderford | 54 | Transport 59 Healthcare 52 | 8,968 | £220,500 |
| 26 | Patchway | 54 | Lifestyle 67 Transport 66 | 8,533 | £300,000 |
| 27 | Nailsworth | 53 | Transport 55 Lifestyle 42 | 5,887 | £325,000 |
| 28 | Chalford | 52 | Transport 39 Economic health 84 | 6,054 | £367,500 |
| 29 | Winchcombe | 51 | Broadband 78 Environment 77 | 3,691 | £412,500 |
| 30 | Brockworth | 50 | Transport 44 Healthcare 37 | 5,933 | £300,000 |
Ranked on the default weighting, out of 100. Strongest categories are the two furthest above the national median for that category, not simply the two highest numbers. Almost every town scores well on safety, so raw highs would say little.
Find your own best place in Gloucestershire
The ranking above uses one weighting. Change any control below to re-rank all 36 qualifying towns around what you actually care about — who's moving, a minimum on one category, a price ceiling for the type of home you'd buy.
Pick a persona or set a filter to re-rank 36 towns in place.
How this ranking was built
Every settlement in Gloucestershire was scored across 9 categories (safety, schools, healthcare, transport, environment, broadband, lifestyle, economic health and bills) from official sources including Police UK, Ofsted, the CQC, Ofcom, the Environment Agency and MHCLG. Two filters then decide who appears here:
- Population above 3,000. Without a floor the list fills with hamlets of a few dozen people. Gloucestershire has 36 towns above it.
- Real data in at least 8 of 9 categories. Places we can only partly measure are excluded rather than ranked on guesswork.
Counties are ceremonial, and a town belongs to the county its postcodes physically sit in, so border towns land where residents would expect them to.
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