Neighbourhoods in Bedford
Tap any row or map polygon to drill into that neighbourhood — hovering on desktop will preview the link before you click. Switch the tab strip above the table to focus on Affordability, Schools, Transport, Safety or Wealth — the columns swap and the default sort follows.
21 neighbourhoods · 117 sub-areas
Rent, scores and YoY change at a glance.
| Cauldwell | £942 | +4.3% | 85 | 34 |
| Harpur | £987 | +4.3% | 82 | 28 |
| Kingsbrook | £998 | +4.3% | 79 | 42 |
| Kempston Central & East | £1,025 | +4.3% | 81 | 58 |
| Queens Park | £1,039 | +4.3% | 81 | 60 |
| Kempston West & South | £1,043 | +4.3% | 63 | 61 |
| Kempston North | £1,081 | +4.3% | 82 | 67 |
| Clapham, Oakley & Thurleigh | £1,097 | +4.3% | 68 | 89 |
| Goldington | £1,128 | +4.3% | 49 | 60 |
| Newnham | £1,146 | +4.3% | 75 | 75 |
| Bedford 021 | £1,155 | +4.3% | 28 | 68 |
| Bedford 022 | £1,162 | +4.3% | 16 | 53 |
| De Parys | £1,166 | +4.3% | 95 | 72 |
| Castle & Kingsway | £1,170 | +4.3% | 83 | 20 |
| Wootton & Stewartby | £1,249 | +4.3% | 58 | 88 |
| Putnoe | £1,266 | +4.3% | 58 | 84 |
| Brickhill | £1,290 | +4.3% | 43 | 75 |
| Bromham & Biddenham | £1,306 | +4.3% | 61 | 82 |
| Wyboston, Great Barford & Cople | £1,355 | +4.3% | 9 | 77 |
| Harrold, Chellington & Turvey | £1,368 | +4.3% | 16 | 96 |
| Riseley & Sharnbrook | £1,421 | +4.3% | 8 | 85 |
Sources: ONS, MHCLG, DfT, DESNZ, Defra, Police.uk, Ofsted, Ofcom, HM Land Registry. Some columns (salary, council tax, HPI) are published at council-area level.
Where to look in Bedford
Three short answers to "where should I focus?" in Bedford. Each list is filtered from the same neighbourhood data above — the basis of each shortlist is stated above the list so you know what's been weighted.
Lowest estimated monthly rent. Rent is the LAD-published ONS PIPR median, scaled per neighbourhood by local sale prices (Land Registry).
Highest composite liveability — combines safety, schools, transport access and rental affordability into one 0–100 score (higher = more liveable).
Highest liveability per pound of rent — desirable areas where rent stays close to or below the Bedford median.
Cost of living
Median rent and council tax across Bedford.
Rent & price breakdownBy bedroom count · property type · affordability
Rent: ONS PIPR (council area). Council tax: VOA + MHCLG. Sale prices: HM Land Registry.
Safety in Bedford
Crime in Bedford runs at 34% below the national average. Below median (#177 of 318 cities) The supporting per-1,000-residents-per-year rate is 66.7, averaged across the council area's neighbourhoods.
How crime is measured
What's counted. Incidents recorded by territorial police forces and published to data.police.uk each month. Rates use the latest 12 months of data divided by the area's mid-2024 ONS resident population — so the figure is reported incidents per 1,000 residents per year.
Anti-social behaviour is the largest category in most areas and is worth reading carefully — it's a community-reports bucket (noise, rowdiness, nuisance), not "crime" in the legal sense. ASB and shoplifting are weighted lower than violent offences in the safety score on each page.
Caveats. The denominator is residents, so workday and tourist destinations can look worse than they feel for someone living there. Greater Manchester forces stopped publishing to data.police.uk in 2020, so figures for those areas are intentionally blank rather than misleadingly low.
Crime detailTop crime types · safest neighbourhoods in this council area
Source: data.police.uk — incident counts adjusted for population, then averaged across the council area's neighbourhoods. National average = England + Wales population-weighted mean.
Schools in Bedford
100% of schools serving Bedford are rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted. Best 5% nationally (#1 of 296 cities)
School breakdownOfsted distribution · best neighbourhoods for schools
Ofsted school inspection ratings, latest inspection per school.
Transport in Bedford
Modelled door-to-door commute from this council area to nearby employment hubs. Closest first.
Transport detailAll city commute times · mode share · best-connected neighbourhoods
DfT Journey Time Statistics + ONS Travel-to-Work.
Job access from Bedford
Bedford has 0.45 jobs per resident locally. Above median
Job access detailReachability tiers · sector mix in this council area
ONS BRES (jobs density) + DfT job-accessibility minutes.
Frequently asked about Bedford
Short answers to the questions we get most often. Each answer is anchored in the data above and links onward where you can dig deeper.
- What is the average rent in Bedford?
- The median monthly rent across Bedford is £1,163, based on ONS Private Rental Prices data. Individual neighbourhoods vary — see the shortlist above for the cheapest and most desirable areas.
- Where is the cheapest place to rent in Bedford?
- The cheapest neighbourhood in Bedford by estimated median rent is Cauldwell at approximately £942/month. The full top-five cheapest list and our methodology are above.
- What's the best neighbourhood to live in Bedford?
- By our composite liveability score (which blends safety, transport, schools, rent affordability and EPC), the top-ranked neighbourhood in Bedford is De Parys at 95/100. The score is editorial; see /methodology/scoring/liveability for the formula.
- Is Bedford a safe area?
- Bedford has an average safety score of 63/100 across its constituent neighbourhoods (higher is safer). The score is the national percentile rank of police-recorded crimes per 1,000 residents per year, inverted so 100 means the safest 1% of England + Wales.
- What is council tax in Bedford?
- The most common council tax band in Bedford is not yet published, with the Band D annual charge currently around £2,051. Council tax is set at the local authority level so the same banding applies to every postcode within Bedford.
- What is the average salary in Bedford?
- The median annual resident salary in Bedford is £35,987, per ONS ASHE 2025. This is salary for people who live in Bedford, not for people who commute in to work there. Workplace median salary is published separately.
- What is the average house price in Bedford?
- The average property price in Bedford is approximately £326,121 according to HM Land Registry's House Price Index. Individual neighbourhoods vary — typically ±20% around this council area median.
- What's the rental yield in Bedford?
- Gross rental yield in Bedford is approximately 3.6% — the council-area level median rent annualised over the council-area level median sale price. Net yield (after agency, void, maintenance and tax) typically runs 30–40% lower.
- How long does it take to save a deposit in Bedford?
- Saving a 10% deposit at the council area median sale price on the council area median salary, while putting away 10% of takehome pay each month, takes approximately 4.7 years in Bedford. Faster if you save more, slower if rents are eating into savings.
- Is gigabit broadband available in Bedford?
- 100% of premises in Bedford are gigabit-capable per Ofcom Connected Nations 2025. Coverage is patchier in older terraces and rural fringes — check your specific postcode for service availability.
- What's the unemployment rate in Bedford?
- 4.5% of 16-64 residents in Bedford are on the DWP Claimant Count — Universal Credit while seeking work, or Jobseeker's Allowance. That's the live monthly local indicator. It's narrower than the ONS Labour Force Survey "ILO unemployment rate" (which counts anyone actively job-seeking on a separate denominator) and narrower again than Census 2021's "% unemployed" (which is calculated against all 16+ residents and so isn't directly comparable).
- How many neighbourhoods are in Bedford?
- Bedford contains 21 neighbourhood neighbourhoods covering 117 sub-areas (local areas). Browse the full list at the bottom of this page or use the neighbourhood map above to drill into a specific area.
What you need on day one
All sub-areas in Bedford
Every local area, ordered by crawl priority. Most readers want the neighbourhood-level view — these are for deep-link cases or external search-engine arrivals.
- Bedford 010E
- Bedford 010F
- Bedford 013B
- Bedford 012A
- Bedford 015G
- Bedford 013D
- Bedford 015C
- Bedford 012F
- Bedford 010D
- Bedford 014E
- Bedford 015A
- Bedford 017D
- Bedford 013E
- Bedford 015H
- Bedford 010A
- Bedford 012G
- Bedford 018B
- Bedford 009B
- Bedford 014D
- Bedford 013A
- Bedford 009C
- Bedford 012B
- Bedford 008G
- Bedford 015E
- Bedford 017B
- Bedford 014A
- Bedford 018A
- Bedford 009D
- Bedford 016B
- Bedford 002D
- Bedford 004B
- Bedford 012H
- Bedford 012E
- Bedford 011C
- Bedford 010C
- Bedford 018E
- Bedford 012C
- Bedford 017A
- Bedford 022A
- Bedford 003C
- Bedford 015D
- Bedford 007E
- Bedford 008B
- Bedford 017C
- Bedford 014F
- Bedford 009A
- Bedford 013C
- Bedford 007D
- Bedford 016D
- Bedford 018F
- Bedford 011A
- Bedford 006A
- Bedford 006F
- Bedford 008H
- Bedford 020B
- Bedford 020D
- Bedford 007A
- Bedford 022C
- Bedford 003E
- Bedford 005A
- Bedford 005B
- Bedford 016A
- Bedford 005F
- Bedford 014C
- Bedford 021B
- Bedford 004H
- Bedford 010B
- Bedford 007B
- Bedford 022D
- Bedford 003A
- Bedford 021A
- Bedford 004D
- Bedford 001D
- Bedford 011D
- Bedford 002C
- Bedford 007F
- Bedford 020F
- Bedford 018C
- Bedford 020E
- Bedford 016C
Showing 80 of 117 sub-areas. Drill into any neighbourhood above for the full sub-area list.