Locatio London
Methodology

Six things that matter, weighted the way you want.

Somewhere that feels safe. Green space to walk the dog. Interesting places to eat. We all want something different from our neighbourhood.

Locatio lets you choose what's important to you and shows you the areas that fit best. Real data, real comparisons — to help you find the neighbourhoods, and even the individual roads, that suit your needs. Not just a pile of stats to make sense of yourself: six things that matter, one number, then narrowed down to the street once you've found somewhere worth a closer look.

Your six criteria

Criterion
What it looks at
Why it matters
Daily needs on footDefault weight 30
Whether you can meet an ordinary day’s needs on foot — the shops, the chemist, the post office, the GP, the library — rather than driving for them.
It counts how many everyday places sit within an 800m walk, and how varied they are: a parade with a butcher, a chemist, a café and a library beats four identical takeaways.
Independent sceneDefault weight 20
Density of independent shops, cafés and restaurants versus chains. A chain is identified by its brand, not just by its name — so a Greene King pub called The Red Lion counts as a chain.
Whether a high street has its own character, or the same brands you'd find anywhere else.
SchoolsDefault weight 15
How much progress pupils make at the state schools around each area — KS1→KS2 progress for primaries within a kilometre, Progress 8 for secondaries within two, because secondary is a phase children travel to. Each measure is corrected for statistical reliability, so an area isn't swung by one small school's noisy year, then the two are blended equally. It measures what schools add, not what they admit — though progress isn't perfectly intake-neutral either, and we'd rather say so: it correlates modestly with disadvantage where raw results correlate strongly. Ofsted's rating is shown for every school in Ofsted's own words, with its date, but is never turned into a score. Private schools are listed separately and aren't scored — there is no comparable progress data for them.
Schools where children progress well lift desirability and resale demand, even if you don't have children — though being near a good school isn't the same as being in its catchment, and our radius is a radius, not a catchment.
Green spaceDefault weight 15
Your everyday walk to genuinely public green space, plus your access to a major park — both measured on foot.
Green space you can't easily reach barely gets used — and a big park does things a small rec ground can't, so everyday closeness and major-park access both count.
Quiet streetsDefault weight 15
Department for Transport traffic counts near the centre of the area. Where the nearest counts are from an earlier year, we use the most recent one — no older than 2019 — and say so on the area's page. Where there's no count point of any year close enough to use, we mark it unmeasured rather than estimate it.†
The biggest gap between how an area looks online and how it feels to live on a specific street.
Culture & leisureDefault weight 10
Access to the things you do on evenings and weekends — venues, galleries, sport.
Day-to-day life happens outside the four walls of the house.

† Two different measures, at two different scales. The neighbourhood score uses Department for Transport traffic counts, which exist at fixed points and not everywhere. The street-level view uses each road's type and position in the network — an estimate of how busy a road is likely to be, not a measured count. Neither captures noise, and both change through the day, so we'd always recommend visiting at different times.

Alongside the score

shown, not scored

Some things matter to buyers but don't belong in a weighted score — either because "good" means something different to everyone, or because they're a yes/no check rather than a spectrum. Switch them on as map overlays, or mark nearby places to your own taste. They colour the map, not the number.

Overlays & nearby
Tube & rail stations EV charging points Food & drink Shops & services Education & childcare Health & recreation Culture & community Betting & other
What counts as green space

A curated map, with the curation published.

The base map is Ordnance Survey Open Greenspace: public parks and gardens, playing fields and sports grounds of two hectares or more. We then apply judgement, and publish every piece of it. Our test is simple — somewhere you could walk, run or picnic. Allotments are out (plot-holders only). Cemeteries are out as a class on the same test, with two managed woodland-cemetery nature reserves ruled back in by name. Private club and school grounds are out where we have evidence they aren't publicly accessible. And because OS doesn't map every wood, named publicly accessible woodlands are added individually — some on the strength of designations and operators rather than a visit.

These are assumptions as much as facts, and some will be wrong at the margins. If you know one of these places and we've called it wrongly — a rec ground that's actually locked, a wood that's actually open — tell us: the list below is designed to be corrected, and every change is dated.

All 38 published rulings (28 in · 10 out) — every one dated, with grounds
SiteRulingGrounds
Hampstead Cricket Club · 2.2 haOutMembers club (Cumberland LTC + Hampstead CC) — not publicly accessible. — 2026-07-30
Harrow School ground · 26.1 haOutSchool ground; OSM names it Harrow School Golf Course, access=private — the unnamed-in-OS case the name heuristic missed. — 2026-07-30
Harrow Town Sports Club · 2.7 haOutPrivate club ground; OSM access=private. — 2026-07-30
Roehampton Club · 39.3 haOutPrivate members club; OSM function truth is golf_course — §4.7 golf rule applies the moment OSM evidence is admitted. — 2026-07-30
Rolls Sports Ground · 5.9 haOutPay-and-play football centre — access by transaction, not everyday green space; fails the picnic test (cannot walk, run or picnic). Closer to the golf class (§4.7) than a rec ground. Equity check clear: highams-park adjoins Epping Forest + The Highams Park. — 2026-07-30
St Dunstans College Jubilee Ground · 7.6 haOutPrivate school sports ground — not publicly accessible everyday green space. — 2026-07-30
Teddington Sports Ground / Udney Park Playing Fields · 5.2 haOutContested, fenced private ground — no general public access today; the OSM leisure=park tag is aspiration, not access; fails the picnic test. Append-only file permits a later dated INCLUDE if community access materialises (the published feedback invite is the correction mechanism). Equity check clear: teddington has Bushy Park. — 2026-07-30
Top Field · 3.8 haOutPrivate club ground; OSM access=private. — 2026-07-30
Westminster School Playing Field · 3.7 haOutSchool ground; OSM access=private. — 2026-07-30
Whitgift Sports Club · 4.6 haOutPrivate club ground; OSM access=private. — 2026-07-30
Harvington Sports Ground · 12.1 haIn (affirmed)Docketed as an EXCLUDE candidate on the name pattern; adjudicated to STAY — OSM tags the footprint leisure=park (Harvington Estate), evidence of genuine public park use. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Chingford — Epping Forest southern edge) · 54.0 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism; Epping Forest edge class. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Colindale) · 2.1 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Crouch End) · 2.5 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism; carries part of the crouch-end +5.6 prize. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Edgware) · 2.8 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Grange Park) · 3.8 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Mill Hill East) · 17.7 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Petts Wood — the NT Petts Wood land) · 6.0 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE — charter-identified as the National Trust Petts Wood land; carries part of the petts-wood +5.2 prize. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Southgate) · 2.7 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
(unnamed wood, Streatham — Tooting/Streatham commons fringe) · 2.0 haInO3 woodland INCLUDE, ruled sight-unseen with the published feedback invite as the correction mechanism. — 2026-07-30
Abney Park Cemetery · 12.6 haInCemetery class is excluded from the qualifying set (picnic test, 30 Jul build-session supersession); Abney Park enters as a named INCLUDE on nature-reserve grounds — designated LNR, open gates, managed woodland park character. — 2026-07-30
Banstead Downs · 176.6 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — open downland/wood nature reserve; load-bearing for belmont (+9.45). — 2026-07-30
Brockley Nature Reserve · 5.3 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — London Wildlife Trust reserve. — 2026-07-30
Coppetts Wood Local Nature Reserve · 14.5 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — LNR. — 2026-07-30
Epsom Common · 172.6 haInO3 cluster contributor — common/nature reserve; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Gillespie Park Nature Reserve · 3.3 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — LNR, Islington; load-bearing for arsenal/finsbury-park. — 2026-07-30
Grove Farm local nature reserve · 8.3 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — LNR, Ealing. — 2026-07-30
Joydens Wood · 170.8 haInO3 cluster contributor — Woodland Trust; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Moat Mount Open Space · 94.0 haInO3 cluster contributor — Barnet open space; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Newlands Wood · 3.4 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE. — 2026-07-30
Nunhead Cemetery · 20.2 haInCemetery class is excluded from the qualifying set (picnic test, 30 Jul build-session supersession); Nunhead enters as a named INCLUDE on nature-reserve grounds — LNR-class managed woodland cemetery, open gates (LB Southwark operator). — 2026-07-30
Oxhey Woods Local Nature Reserve · 104.6 haInO3 cluster contributor — LNR; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Ruislip Woods National Nature Reserve · 307.7 haInO3 cluster contributor — NNR, public; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Sanderstead to Whyteleafe Countryside Area · 95.7 haInO3 cluster contributor — countryside area; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Stambourne Woodland Walk · 2.1 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — council woodland walk. — 2026-07-30
The Gravel Pits · 4.8 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE. — 2026-07-30
Walthamstow Wetlands · 201.9 haInO3 cluster contributor — access=permissive, London Wildlife Trust; feeds the ≥50 ha tier. — 2026-07-30
Woodberry Wetlands · 10.7 haInO3 named woodland INCLUDE — London Wildlife Trust, public since 2016. — 2026-07-30
Data sources

Where our scores come from

Every score is built on public data — government and public datasets, plus OpenStreetMap, the open map of the world maintained by its contributors. What we never use is opinion: no user reviews, no star ratings, no forum sentiment. Where a dataset has known gaps, we say so rather than filling them in.

Recorded crime

Recorded crime from data.police.uk — "recorded" is the subset of reports police formally document. Counted over the newest published twelve months, excluding shoplifting, divided by usual resident population (Census 2021) and shown per 1,000 residents a year. Banded within London — a third of areas sit in each band, so "above average for London" is a comparison with the rest of the city, never a national judgement — alongside how evenly it spreads across an area's own streets. Displayed and filterable, never scored.

Transport & connectivity

Station locations and lines from Transport for London, plus National Rail stations. Shown for context — connectivity isn't scored, because a good commute depends on where you're going.

Schools

The Department for Education's school-level pupil-progress measures, joined to the DfE schools register for locations. Ofsted inspection outcomes are shown per school, verbatim, for context — they don't feed the score.

Property & the local market

HM Land Registry sold-price records, the definitive public record of what homes actually sell for.

Traffic & quiet streets

Traffic-count data from the Department for Transport, alongside official road-network data that tells us each street's type and place in the network.

Green space

Ordnance Survey's map of parks, playing fields and other public open space, curated by a short list of published rulings — private grounds out, named public woodlands in. We measure two walks: to the nearest mapped public green space, and to the nearest big park — 50 hectares or more of connected green space — blended 70:30. Closeness to everyday green first, with access to a major park counted too.

The neighbourhood itself

Census and Office for National Statistics data for the demographic and community picture.

We always take the most recent official release of each source. They update on their own schedules — crime monthly, traffic counts annually, census data only every ten years — so we publish the vintage of each one rather than generalise. Those are the main families — the layers we show for context but never score, including GP practices, flood risk, EV charge points and Census 2021 social-housing tenure, are set out with every licence and attribution on the data sources page.

What we don't do

We don't sell your data, and we don't let anyone pay to move up the rankings. The scores are the scores.

Your weights

There's no single best neighbourhood.

Every one of those six carries a different weight depending on what matters to you. Move the sliders and every score recalculates instantly — a family prioritising quiet streets and green space will see a different "best area" than a couple prioritising culture and an independent food scene. There's the one that scores highest against what you value.

Move the sliders
Stoke Newington · sample
73 /100
Daily needs on foot
Independent scene
Schools
Green space
Quiet streets
Culture & leisure
Reading the score

The same area can score differently for two different people.

Because the score reflects the weights you've set, the same area can score differently for two different people. So read the bands as how well a place fits your priorities — not as a verdict on the place. These are the same words and the same cut-offs the tool itself uses:

72–100 Strong match — across most of what you've told us matters.
60–71 Good match — solid, with one or two trade-offs worth checking in the breakdown.
45–59 Mixed — good on some of your priorities, weaker on others.
30–44 Weak match — weak against the priorities you've set; the breakdown shows which.
under 30 Poor match — unlikely to fit the priorities you've set.

Those four cut-offs are ours — a reading aid over a continuous score, not a finding in themselves. The score and every criterion behind it are shown in full, so you can ignore the bands entirely.

Every score is a rank against the rest of London, so as we add areas the comparison gets more complete and scores shift a little to match — the ruler getting better, not the area changing. We hold the ruler steady between updates and re-base it in one deliberate step. Scores were last re-based on 26 August 2026, against a pool of 307 neighbourhoods.

Down to the street

A neighbourhood score is a starting point, not the final word. The same area can contain a quiet tree-lined street and a road that funnels traffic past your front door. Once you've picked an area, drop to street level to see how the picture changes postcode by postcode.

Street colours are live: your Quiet streets and Green space dials set the blend, and the same fixed thresholds apply across all of London — so any two streets, anywhere in the city, are read on one scale. Where neither street reading can be determined from the underlying data, a postcode is shown grey rather than guessed at.

We don't map every road in London — this isn't a street atlas. We surface the streets that reveal how an area's character shifts within itself: the calm terraces and the busy through-routes a single score would average away. If your exact road isn't shown, the streets around it — and the neighbourhood read above — still point you the right way. And nothing replaces walking it at different times of day.

See how your priorities score →
Inside the tool

The score gets you to the right areas. The tool is how you decide between them.

Beyond the map and the sliders, the tool carries a set of working surfaces built for the shortlist stage. Each one is described here so nothing in the tool is unexplained — and none of them moves a score.

What's nearby

Around any postcode you pick, the tool maps what's actually there — six themes, from Food & drink to Betting & other, twenty-two categories in all. Mark a category you'd rather avoid and its pins are flagged on the map; your choices are remembered on your account. Like every layer on this list, it colours the map, never the number.

Top 10 streets

Every area carries a ranked Top 10 of its streets under your current dials — each one picked out on the map, so the roads that best fit your priorities stand out from the ones that merely surround them.

Neighbourhood match

Found somewhere that fits? The tool names the five areas whose scored profile most closely matches it — traced on the map, each with a plain note on what differs: quieter streets, a stronger independent scene, more green. A way of turning one good find into five candidates.

My areas & side-by-side comparison

Star the areas you're considering — up to twenty — and compare five side by side: the six scored criteria and your score for each, then a context block shown never scored: schools in detail, recorded crime (the London-relative band with its rate, and how evenly it spreads street to street), the walk to the station, the housing mix, GP practices, your own notes. Move a weight and every column recalculates. And where two starred areas share a boundary, the comparison says so — some of what you're comparing is the same ground.

Step next door

At street level, edge markers name the areas next door — anywhere two areas sit within 50 metres of each other counts as adjacent. One tap steps you across the boundary with your budget and settings carried with you, because the best street for you sometimes sits just over the line.

Street View

Every postcode pane carries a Google Street View preview — dated, where Google publishes the imagery date — so you can see the street before you visit it. The interactive view loads from Google only when you choose to open it, under Google's own terms — nothing loads until you click.

None of these layers moves a score. The six criteria, weighted your way, are the only thing the number ever reads — everything else is there to help you look properly.