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Affordability

Where your salarystretches furthest.

A good salary buys a very different life depending on where you spend it. Our affordability score weighs typical local earnings against what it costs to buy or rent there, so a place ranks well when ordinary pay goes a long way, not simply because wages are high.

The inputs are official: workplace earnings from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, house prices from the Land Registry and its Scottish and Welsh equivalents, and private rents from the ONS. The ranking below covers every local authority in Great Britain on a like-for-like basis.

Source: BritPlace composite score. Data updated March 2026.

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55

Top: Worcester

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55

National median

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55

Bottom: Worcester

Worcester leads Great Britain on this measure, while Worcester sits at the other end of the table. The chart below ranks the ten strongest; the full map shows where every other authority lands.

Best value for money: top 10 local authorities

Why the map, not just the league table

A top-10 list answers "where is best", but a relocation decision is usually about a region or a commute belt. The full map recolours every authority at once, so you can see whether the affordable places cluster around one city, line a coast, or sit just beyond the priciest commuter towns.

How to read the score

Greener means earnings go further against local housing costs; redder means they are squeezed. The score is relative across Great Britain, so a mid-table area is genuinely middling rather than simply missing data.

Metric Explorer

See the full affordability map

Open the Metric Explorer with affordability preselected, then switch to salary, broadband, or any quality-of-life score to compare the same places a different way.