Work, house prices, schools and crime rates often play the biggest roles in deciding where we live. However, things like recycling, clean areas and air quality are becoming increasingly more important to homeowners.
With all this in mind, we examined a number of English cities and towns to find out which ones were the cleanest.
Based on waste expenditure, air quality, recycling rates and overall cleanliness and tidiness, which are England’s cleanest cities?
If you’ve been to Newcastle, you won’t forget it in a hurry. Known as one of the friendliest cities in the UK, the city has many famous icons - Newcastle United F.C and Ant & Dec to name a couple. What you might not know is that Newcastle is also the cleanest city in England.
As one of the cities with the highest total waste expenditure per person, Newcastle invests a great deal into keeping the city clean and tidy. Over £121 is spent per person on waste collection, recycling and climate change costs.
The town of Telford takes second place with a Clean City score of 8.26. The town is known as ‘The Birthplace of Industry’, but while the Industrial Revolution may conjure up images of black smoke belching out of factory chimneys, it’s safe to say that Telford has cleaned up its act, taking the spot of number two.
The cathedral city of York is known for its rich history, having origins as far back as the Romans. These days, the city is known for its cleanliness, ranking in the top three cleanest English cities with a Clean City score of 7.28.
Each local authority may assign a percentage of funds towards waste management and climate change costs as they see fit. So which areas invest the most into these services and initiatives?
With a whopping £135 per person, Brighton and Hove takes the top spot as the city which invests the most into waste management. In total, the area invests more than £18.7 million, with £3.9 million going directly into recycling services.
As England’s cleanest city, it’s not surprising to see it ranking so highly for waste management investment. The total expenditure stands at £23.3 million which equates to £121 per person.
In third place for total waste expenditure is Leeds, investing more than £53.8 million into waste management and climate change costs, which equates to £118 per person.
Air quality has a significant, proven impact on our quality of life. Poor air quality can lead to (and aggravate) a number of respiratory illnesses, so it should be an important factor for people when choosing where to live.
While all of our 40 cities have good air quality scores, some cities scored better than others. In the case of the air quality index, a score between 0-50 is considered to be good. The lower the number, the better the air quality.
Of the 40 cities, four achieved the best air quality score of 19, indicating that these places have excellent air quality. These cities are listed below:
Most of us try to do our bit for the planet by filling our recycling bins each week with rubbish that would otherwise end up in landfills. However, some cities seem to recycle far more than others.
tonnes of household waste sent for recycling per 10,000 people
Chelmsford tops the list with a total of 10,117 tonnes of household waste sent for recycling, composting or reuse between April and June of 2020. This equates to a massive 907.26 tonnes per 10,000 people in the city.
tonnes of household waste sent for recycling per 10,000 people
With 9,403 total tonnes of household waste being sent for recycling, equating to 873.67 tonnes per 10,000 people, Maidstone takes the spot of number two.
tonnes of household waste sent for recycling per 10,000 people
Boasting a huge total of 13,666 total tonnes of household waste sent for recycling in just three months, Cambridge ranks at number three with 862.57 tonnes per 10,000 people.
In the final part of our study, we looked to local residents to find out how clean they thought their towns and cities were. So without further ado, which places were ranked the best by locals?
Topping the list is Exeter whose residents have given it a score of 79.17 out of 100. This suggests that its public areas are well looked after and clean.
After ranking number two in the overall clean cities, Telford takes the second spot again as its residents give it a resident rating score of 75 out of 100.
While Eastbourne doesn’t rank as well for other factors, it takes the joint second spot with Telford for resident ratings with a score of 75 out of 100.
After ranking the cleanest English cities, we wanted to see how their rankings compared to their average house prices. Is there any correlation between cleanliness and property price?
Looking at the top scoring cities, we can see that they have fairly low house prices. The average price of all 40 cities is £241,052, while the top scoring city of Newcastle has an average house price of £173,968. Telford, which ranks second, has an average house price of £190,055.
House prices at the bottom of the list however, tend to be higher than those with higher Clean City scores. Portsmouth has the lowest score of 2.67 and an average house price of £231,027, while Ipswich has a score of 3.08 and an average house price of £207,519.
Waste management expenditure figures sourced from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government’s local authority revenue expenditure and financing data, released in June 2021 and refers to the total expenditure of each relevant authority within the county in 2019-20.
In instances where a council spends £0 on a certain service, this is because these services will likely be covered by another authority.
The annual average air quality index scores were taken from Plume Labs with a lower score indicating a better air quality.
Recycling rates were taken from the government’s quarterly local authority collected waste management statistics and refers to the total tonnes of household waste sent for recycling, composting or reuse for the three-month period of April to June 2020.
The clean and tidy score is an average of user submissions according to Numbeo’s Quality of Life Index Average house prices are taken from the government’s UK House Price Index for 2021.
To get our final score, we assigned a normalised score out of 10 for each factor before taking an average of all of these scores, to give a final score out of 10.
While we began by looking at the 100 most populated cities and towns across England, we removed any where data was not available, leaving us with 40 cities in total.