How the Living here rankings work
The Living here section of a paid Investigation compares one home with other homes in England on eleven everyday topics, using public data. Every line is a measured fact and where it sits against a benchmark. Nothing here calls an area good or bad, and nothing is a forecast.
What the section shows
For each topic the report states the home's own value, such as the number of crimes recorded nearby or the distance to the nearest station, and then says how that value compares with a benchmark of English homes. The section ends with Your Fit, a single number that re-weights the topics by the priorities you pick. It is labelled "Your weighting, not our rating" because the weights are yours.
The eleven topics and their sources
| Topic | What is measured | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded crime | 12 months of recorded crime at the postcode's police map point. Fewer is better. Without a complete count the home is not ranked on crime, and the line says why: "None recorded" where police.uk shows no crimes at the map point, because a zero cannot be told apart from missing data; "Incomplete" where some months did not load; and "No published data" in Greater Manchester, whose police force has not published crime records to police.uk since 2019. | police.uk |
| Road and rail noise | The louder of road and rail noise, in decibels, at the address point. Quieter is better. | Defra strategic noise mapping, Round 4 |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | Annual average background level at the postcode. Lower is better. | Defra background air quality maps |
| Fine particles (PM2.5) | Annual average background level at the postcode. Lower is better. | Defra background air quality maps |
| Primary school rated Good or better | Straight-line distance to the nearest primary school with a Good or Outstanding Ofsted outcome, or the equivalent outcome since Ofsted changed its inspection reporting in September 2024. Independent and special schools are excluded. Closer is better. | Ofsted |
| Secondary school rated Good or better | The same measure for secondary schools. Independent and special schools are excluded. | Ofsted |
| Nursery rated Good or better | Straight-line distance to the nearest early-years provider graded Good or Outstanding. Closer is better. | Ofsted early-years grades |
| Rail, tube or tram station | Straight-line distance to the nearest station. Closer is better. | NaPTAN |
| Bus stops within 400 m | The number of bus stops within 400 metres of the home. More is better. | NaPTAN |
| Gigabit broadband | The share of premises in the postcode that can get gigabit broadband. Higher is better. | Ofcom Connected Nations |
| Band D council tax | The council's Band D charge for the latest published financial year. Lower is better. There is one rate per council. | Published council tax levels |
Distances are straight-line, not walking or driving routes, and are measured up to 8 km. A home with no qualifying site within 8 km is shown as "None within 8 km" and gets no percentage on that line. Where Defra does not map the address for noise, the line is shown as not available and not ranked. A "None within 8 km" line shows no percentage but still counts, as the lowest ranking, in its group and in Your Fit.
How the benchmark homes are sampled
Address Lens does not rank a home against other customers' searches. It builds its own benchmark. For every local authority in England it draws about 160 postcodes at random and picks one random home in each postcode. Each sampled home is measured with the same code and sources the report uses for your home.
A sampled home is weighted by the number of homes in its postcode and by how much of its council area the sample covers. A postcode with many homes therefore speaks for more homes than a postcode with a few. Every council area gets about the same number of sampled postcodes, so a sampled home in a large council area stands for more homes than one in a small council area. That way the England figures represent English homes, not council areas. The draw is seeded, so the same benchmark version always draws the same homes.
Crime and noise come from services that limit how fast they can be asked, so they are measured for fewer homes, picked at random from the start of the draw. Each of those homes also stands for the sampled homes in its council area that were not measured, so the England figures still represent English homes.
Crime is measured for about 80 of the sampled homes in each council area, because police.uk answers only a few requests a second and each home needs a year of monthly records.
Noise is measured for about 10 of the sampled homes in each council area, because Defra's noise service answers only a few requests a minute.
What "better than X%" means
"Better than 70% of English homes" means that 70% of the weighted benchmark homes do strictly worse than your home on that topic: a share of homes that do strictly worse, rounded to the nearest 5. Homes with exactly the same value are not counted as worse.
Many homes can share one value. Where at least a fifth of homes share your home's exact value, the line says so instead of giving a percentage, for example "100% of premises — shared by 40% of English homes". A noise level below the lowest level Defra maps counts as the quietest group.
Where a topic has two lines, schools, air and transport, the group figure is the mean of its lines. Your Fit is a weighted mean of the group figures. It needs at least four groups with values and is otherwise not shown.
Why every line compares with England
Every line compares the home with English homes, not with homes in its own council area. The England figures rest on about 47,000 sampled homes, and they barely move when the sample is drawn again: typically by about one percentage point or less. A comparison within one council area rests on far fewer homes. When we tested 500 homes before launch, only about half of council-area comparisons stayed within 10 percentage points if the sample were drawn again, and for crime and noise almost none did. Rather than compare some homes with their council area and not others, the section compares every home with England.
Flood and deprivation: facts, not rankings
Flood risk and the deprivation decile are shown as facts, not rankings. Flood bands are ordered categories shared by most homes, and the deprivation decile describes the people living in a small area rather than the home. Both appear beside the ranked lines as context.
What is not covered
- Green space and commute time are not covered, because Address Lens holds no data for them.
- Coverage is England only. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are not ranked, and homes are never compared across the border.
- A topic whose source does not cover your address shows "Not available for this home" and is not ranked. It is never filled in with a guess.
- The section reports what the sources record. It is not a survey, a valuation or advice about whether to buy.
How often it is refreshed
The benchmark is refreshed quarterly. The benchmark version shown on each report says which one was used, for example "Area rankings: Address Lens benchmark 2026-10-v1". A delivered report keeps the figures it was generated with, so a later refresh never changes it.
Source attributions are on the data sources and licences page.