Ranked Report names town as second safest place to live in UK

CHELTENHAM has been named the second safest place to live in the UK, according to a new report.

Factors taken into account included how safe locals felt, taxi availability and safety, and incidents of serious crimes, according to the survey by Get Licensed.

Cheltenham ranked top as the town or city with the lowest overall street crime, and second overall among the UK’S safest towns and cities, behind Warrington in Cheshire.

When it came to robberies, the town has only 0.017 crimes recorded per 1,000 residents.

Gloucester came in at 28th in the list, which also included Bristol in third position and Swindon in seventh.

The survey also looked at drug crime, weapon possession, violent offences and robberies per thousand people to reveal the UK’S safest cities to live in.

It said: “Cheltenham claims second place on our list with a Safety Index Score of 7.32. Benefitting from low crime rates across the board and a good rate of perceived safety among residents, Cheltenham is undoubtedly one of the safest places to live in the UK.

“Cheltenham has the lowest overall street crime across the offences we tracked, culminating in a Street Crime Score of 8.65. The town performs particularly well when it comes to robberies, with only 0.017 crimes recorded per 1,000 residents.”

It also came in at number 10 in the list of the places where people feel safest, regarding walking alone at night, worries about being mugged, robbed or attacked and worries of hate crime.

The bottom of the list, or the places considered the most unsafe to live in according to the survey, was dominated by northern towns and cities, which made up eight of the lowestscoring 10. The other two were Basildon and Chelmsford, both in Essex. Doncaster came bottom with a score of just 2.14.

The main body of information used for the survey was taken from police data relating to street crime statistics from January 2022, with several offence categories identified that made people feel less safe. Each crime type was treated as an individual factor, with the rate per 1,000 people for each offence being calculated in each location using data from The Geographist. Many Gloucestershire Live readers have said they were surprised at Cheltenham’s second-from-top rating. Posting his comment on our Facebook page, Martin Cain said simply: “It’s a joke...right?” Other readers said the same kind of thing, with some mentioning violent incidents in the town they had either been caught up in or were aware of. One person adding a comment on our website, using the profile name Meh., said: “Didn’t feel too safe the numerous times I’ve suffered violent homophobia.”

Cheltenham is undoubtedly one of the safest places to live in the UK Survey spokesperson