Student hotspot is ‘best connected’ area in Bath
Oldfield Park is the best connected place in Bath.
That’s because the student hotspot has schools and doctors’ surgeries – plus food shops and transport links – within an easy reach.
People living in the neighbourhood are just minutes from schools – on average six minutes to a primary and eight minutes to a secondary on foot or by public transport, and seven minutes to both by car.
Getting to their GP will take five minutes on average by walking or public transport, or seven minutes by car or bike, while it’s 29 minutes to hospital on foot or by public transport or 18 minutes in a car.
For those planning to head further afield, Bristol airport is an hour away by public transport or 48 minutes by car, while the nearest hub station, Bristol Temple Meads, is 27 and 40 minutes’ travel respectively.
Meanwhile, the villages of Nempnett Thrubwell, Ubley and Compton Martin are the most isolated places in Bath and North East Somerset.
By foot or public transport, it’s an average 15-minute journey to a primary school and 42 minutes to a secondary school. By car, that’s cut to eight minutes and 16 minutes respectively.
A GP is 25 minutes away by walking or public transport, 18 minutes on a bike or 10 minutes in a car, while it takes over an hour to get to hospital on public transport.
Getting to an airport or major station is likely to take more than four hours on public transport, although in the car you could be at Bristol airport in 23 minutes and Bristol Temple Meads in 39 minutes.
So how can we tell how isolated a community is? A study based on official figures, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), ranks every one of 32,844 neighbourhoods in England based on how long the ONS says it takes an average person to reach local amenities.
Shadwell, in London, is the best connected neighbourhood in England. The area benefits from three schools, a wide variety of food shops, a connecting rail station, and a doctors’ surgery within just a few streets.
At the other end of the ‘connectedness’ scale is a sparsely-populated neighbourhood in Teignbridge, Devon – running from the villages of Poundsgate in the south to Moretonhampstead in the north.
According to the ONS data, the average resident of that area is 51 minutes away (on foot or on public transport) from the nearest primary school and nearly two hours from the nearest secondary school.
The nearest hospital takes at least two hours by public transport and the nearest major airport or railway station (Bristol and Exeter respectively) are more than two hours away.
The ONS data breaks down England into neighbourhoods, or ‘lower super output areas,’ which contain roughly the same number of people (around 1,500 in all). That means neighbourhoods in densely populated cities and towns tend to be much smaller, and average travel times to key services tend to be shorter.
Lightly populated neighbourhoods are bigger and tend to fare much worse in the rankings.
The travel times show the average time it takes to get to key services for all people living in a particular neighbourhood.
‘Major’ airports are those with at least one per cent of UK air traffic, while ‘major’ railway stations are those which are considered, for official purposes, to be national or regional hubs.