York village among best in the UK (From York Press)

Dunnington among best places to live in the UK

9:29am Monday 1st October 2012 in News By Nadia Jefferson-Brown, nadia.jefferson-brown@thepress.co.uk

A VILLAGE near York has been named as one of the best places in England and Wales to bring up a family.

Dunnington is ranked among the top 20 towns in a survey commissioned by Family Investments, which examined factors including quality of schools, childcare provision, affordability of living and crime levels.

The Berkshire town of Wokingham, 33 miles from London with a population of 30,000, topped the study, which is dominated by counties in the south east and south west.

Other factors considered included key stage two and four results, school inspection outcomes, quantity and quality of early years care, affordability of childcare, local crime figures and property affordability.

It also considered the availability of an existing population of parents with young children, parks and green spaces, leisure centres, zoos and farms and museums and theatres.

Dunnington’s high ranking comes as no surprise to Dunnington-born Roy Freer, 79, who has lived in his marital home for nearly 55 years.

He is now in his 13th year as chairman of Dunnington in Bloom which has just won gold in this year’s Yorkshire In Bloom competition in the small town category.

He said there was at least “95 per cent community involvement” within the village to make it attractive.

“We are making Dunnington a place where people can be proud of and want to live. We are not far from York, and we have a good bus service. We have a great school, beautiful sports fields and children’s play areas. We are very fortunate. It has more for younger families than many other places.”

As for crime – one of the factors considered – he said it was “reasonably quiet”..

“We do get petty stuff,” he said. “Recently somebody had stolen two barrels of beer from the outskirts of the village and somebody had stolen some scrap metal.”

Kate Moore, head of savings and investments at Family Investments, said: “Everybody has different ideas about what makes a great location to start a family and bring up a child and we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in gathering information on the factors parents have told us are most important.”

Family Investments has an online tool to enable families to compare areas according to postcodes at www.family.co.uk/hotspots .