Our Data & Methods

House price data comes from the HM Land Registry Price Paid dataset, which records every residential property transaction in England and Wales lodged for registration. We download the full 2023, 2024, and 2025 bulk files, covering approximately 2.5 million transactions.

For each postcode district (outcode, e.g. GU1 or SW3) we calculate:

• Average price — mean of all sales over the full period
• Median price — middle value, less affected by outliers
• Transactions (12 months) — volume of sales in the most recent 12-month window
• 1-year price change — percentage change between the most recent 12 months and the prior 12 months (minimum 5 sales required in each period)
• 5-year price change — same methodology over a 5-year comparison window
• By property type — separate averages for detached, semi-detached, terraced, and flat

City of London note: Postcodes such as EC2, EC3, W1, and WC include commercial property transactions. Average prices in these districts are not directly comparable to residential areas.

Crime data comes from the data.police.uk API, which provides street-level crime records from all territorial police forces in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. We query 12 months of crime incidents centred on the geographic centroid of each postcode district.

We report crime as a rate per 1,000 residents, calculated by dividing the annual incident count by an estimated local population. We use 55,000 residents for London postcodes and 38,000 for other postcodes, based on average outcode populations from ONS data.

Crime types reported: violent crime, burglary, vehicle crime, anti-social behaviour, and other theft.

The national average of 81.3 crimes per 1,000 residents is based on ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales data (year ending March 2024).

Limitation: Police-recorded data reflects only reported incidents. Under-reporting varies by crime type. The API queries a roughly 1-mile radius, which may cross postcode boundaries in dense urban areas.

School data comes from two official sources combined:

• DfE Get Information About Schools (GIAS) — the national register of all open schools in England, including name, type, postcode, and phase
• Ofsted Management Information (January 2026) — the most recent Ofsted inspection outcomes for all state-funded schools

Schools are matched between datasets using their unique URN (Unique Reference Number) and assigned to postcode districts by their school postcode. We report the count of schools rated Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, and Inadequate. Independent schools are excluded (not rated by Ofsted).

Broadband coverage data comes from Ofcom's Connected Nations 2024 report (July 2024 snapshot). The dataset contains per-postcode coverage percentages for every UK residential address.

For each postcode district we calculate averages for: superfast coverage (≥30 Mbit/s), ultrafast coverage (≥100 Mbit/s), gigabit-capable coverage, and full fibre (FTTP) coverage.

The estimated average download speed is a weighted calculation: premises with only superfast access are assumed to achieve ~55 Mbit/s; ultrafast ~150 Mbit/s; gigabit-capable ~400 Mbit/s; and below superfast ~12 Mbit/s.

Council tax figures come from the MHCLG Area Council Tax table (2025-26), which shows the total Band D rate collected in each billing authority area. This is the full bill — it includes the district or borough council's own rate plus precepts from the county council, police and crime commissioner, fire authority, and any mayoral precept.

Each postcode district is mapped to its billing authority using the postcodes.io API. Scotland and Wales operate different council tax frameworks and are not included in the MHCLG dataset; figures for those areas use regional estimates.

Band D is the reference band. Actual bills scale from two-thirds (Band A) to double (Band H) the Band D rate.

Population figures come from ONS Mid-Year Population Estimates (2023) via the NOMIS API. Tenure data (owner-occupied, private rented, social rented percentages) comes from the ONS Census 2021 (Table TS054), also via NOMIS.

Both datasets are available at local authority level. Each postcode district is assigned to its local authority via postcodes.io, and the authority's figures are applied to all districts within it. Where a postcode district spans two authorities, the primary authority (by area) is used.