Study names Wealden the most peaceful place in the South East
Wealden in East Sussex has been crowned the most peaceful place to live in the South East and fifth in the UK according to research.
A study by property specialists SAM Conveyancing scored every local authority in England and Wales on four measures that decide whether somewhere is genuinely peaceful to live in: how quiet it is at night, crime levels, how much publicly accessible green space residents have, and how close homes are to nightlife venues such as pubs, bars and clubs.
Wealden topped the South East with a peace score of 85.5 out of 100, and finishes fifth of the 316 local authorities ranked in England and Wales.
The recorded crime rate in Wealden is 41.1 offences per 1,000 residents is the seventh lowest in England and Wales, compared to a national median of 71.1.
Horsham completes the regional top five on 80.1 out of 100 and 19th nationally, with the seventh lowest crime rate in the South East at 44.4 offences per 1,000 residents and only 1.07% of residents living beside a cluster of licensed premises.
Commenting on the study, Andrew Boast, CEO of SAM Conveyancing, said: "Buyers spend months on the things they can measure – the price, the survey, the school catchment – and almost no time on the thing they will notice on their first night in the house, which is how quiet it actually is.
"A Sunday afternoon viewing tells you very little about what a road sounds like at two in the morning, or what happens when the pub two streets away turns out.
"The encouraging thing is that this is all knowable before you commit. What the road carries at night, how close the nearest railway line is, what is licensed within a few hundred metres – that information is public, and it costs nothing to look at. Anyone moving home should be asking those questions before they exchange rather than after."