Coley Park
Reading 013 · 5 sub-areas · 9,786 residents
Reading 013 is a mixed residential neighbourhood within Reading, home to around 9,800 people. A typical two-bedroom flat lets for about £1,400 a month — slightly above Reading's wider market but still well under comparable London commuter-belt areas. With 40% of residents working from home and a rail commute to London of around 41 minutes, it's a neighbourhood that suits people who want city access without city-centre prices.
Coley Park is a mid-density neighbourhood of Reading in the South East region. It sits between busier and quieter parts of the local authority and isn't dominated by a single use — there's a mix of workplaces, housing and local services. A high share of adults are degree-educated, which often shows up in the kind of jobs people commute to.
Overview
What's it like to live in Coley Park?
The area is unusually green for its density — 6 parks and 2 playgrounds sit within five minutes' walk of the centroid; Crime sits around the national average — neither a notable concern nor a notable selling point; Public transport is genuinely strong; most errands and a fair share of social life don't need a car; rents are roughly in line with the national norm, at around £1,579 a month for a typical home; gigabit broadband is effectively universal.
Generated from the latest May 2026 data · refreshed automatically
Figures are aggregated across 5 sub-areas — population-weighted means for rates, sums for counts. Sources cited beneath each section.
Coley Park in Reading
Living in Coley Park
Reading 013 sits in the middle of Reading's rental market — not the cheapest part of town, but not the premium end either. The area has a noticeably mixed character: a substantial share of owner-occupiers (just under half of households) alongside a meaningful social housing presence at around one in five homes, and a sizable private rental sector. That tenure mix gives the neighbourhood a more settled, permanent feel than some inner Reading postcodes where private renters dominate.
The cost picture is manageable by South East standards. A two-bed here runs roughly £1,400 a month — about 17% above the UK median for a two-bedroom home, but the salary base in the area is decent enough that most working households can absorb it. Council tax (Band D) comes to around £2,613 a year, which is the standard Reading rate. The median property sale price of around £349,000 puts buying within realistic reach for dual-income households, with a deposit savings period of just under five years if you're renting and saving concurrently.
The population skews relatively young — more than a quarter of residents are aged 18 to 34 — but there's also a solid family cohort, with nearly one in five households being couples with children. Ethnic diversity is high, with a diversity index of 54 and just over 60% of residents UK-born, which reflects Reading's broader character as one of the more internationally diverse towns in the South East.
On a practical level, Reading's mainline station is roughly 1 km away — around a 13-minute walk — which makes the 41-minute rail service to London Paddington genuinely accessible on foot. Gigabit broadband covers 100% of the area, and four in ten residents work from home, so connectivity clearly matters here. See the streets and sub-areas below for more detail on how conditions vary within Reading 013.
What you'll need on day one
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Frequently asked
- Is Reading 013 a nice place to live?
- It's a solid, mixed neighbourhood — not the most polished part of Reading but well-connected and reasonably priced for the South East. The high work-from-home rate and 100% gigabit broadband coverage suit remote workers well. Crime is marginally above the national average but not dramatically so, and deprivation is moderate rather than severe.
- What is the rent in Reading 013?
- A one-bedroom flat runs around £1,120 a month, a two-bed around £1,400, and a three-bed around £1,670. These are estimates scaled from borough-level data using local sale prices. Rents rose 3.4% over the past year, in line with broader South East trends.
- Is Reading 013 safe?
- Crime runs at about 84.5 incidents per 1,000 residents a year — slightly above the UK national rate of roughly 80 per 1,000, but not by much. The neighbourhood sits in the middle of Reading's safety distribution rather than at either extreme. Busier commercial streets tend to see more incidents than quieter residential roads.
- What's the commute from Reading 013 to London?
- The nearest mainline rail station is roughly a 13-minute walk away, and trains from Reading reach London Paddington in around 41 minutes. That makes it one of the more practical South East commuter locations, especially combined with the area's 100% gigabit broadband for hybrid workers.
- Who lives in Reading 013?
- A broadly mixed community — around 26% are aged 18 to 34, with a solid family cohort (couples with children make up nearly one in five households). Almost half of homes are owner-occupied, one in five are social housing, and about a third are private rentals. Around 43% of residents hold a degree-level qualification.
- What schools are near Reading 013?
- There are 94 schools within 2 km of typical residents, giving good coverage in terms of choice. Around 32% of those nearby schools are rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted, which is below the national average of approximately 89%. The nearest Outstanding-rated school is just under 1,900 metres away. Check individual catchment boundaries before assuming access.
- How does Reading 013 compare to other Reading neighbourhoods for affordability?
- It sits in the mid-range. A two-bed at around £1,400 a month isn't the cheapest you'll find in Reading, but it's not the premium end either. The deposit-to-buying timeline of just under five years is reasonable for the South East, and the salary base — median resident earnings of around £35,000 — is decent enough to make it workable for single professionals and couples.