Here it is. The last Top 10 worst places to live in England we are going to do. There was no voting this year as there was no point. Over the last year, Google’s core algorithm updates have seen traffic to iLiveHere fall by 70%. Apparently Google sees the main source of opinions on Britain’s towns, not to be articles written by residents but flippant comments made by ill-informed barely literate yet highly opinionated gobsh1tes on Reddit and “huns” on Mumsnet who post asking what time the local Tesco closes and “too many sneks around ‘ere, it’s just me un the kids now” provincial drama. It’s easier for Google’s and OpenAI’s LLM models to lap up that Internet landfill and regurgitate it. All that plus every JP seat-sniffing Dan-Wooten-wannabe sh!7bag local churnalist gutting our content and reposting it, before getting back to writing the “News”, which turns out to be “take a look inside of this mansion a local Estate Agent is definitely not paying us to write about” and our interweb goose is cooked!
However, we’ve been dishing the dirt on towns the length and breadth of this septic isle thanks to our contributors for the last 18 years. Yes, it was 2006 when this site first launched as “ChavTowns”. What has been apparent since since then is that outside London, vast swathes of this decaying country are almost third-world and its towns reflect that. Think we are making this up? According to the IMF, there are 3 regions of the UK that in terms of GRP per capita, are poorer than Hungary, Poland and Croatia. Southern Scotland is poorer per capita in GRP than Uruguay. Our definitive top 10 is not meant to shame these towns, but the politicians on all sides of the parliamentary trough who pretend everything in the garden is rosey and are disconnected from the reality of Britain in 2025 to the point of psychosis. This country needs vast wealth redistribution if any of the following holes are to become decent places to live. That will not happen through more-of-the-same neoliberalism of the last 45 years or far-right nationalist populism of self-serving grifters like Farage who just wants to line his own pockets using the hope and faith of the people this country has deserted… just like Oswald Mosley. Anyway, you didn’t come here to read but gloat, so here you go!
10. Sheerness-on-sea
If you’re familiar with the garden of England (Kent), you know that most of the towns east of Maidstone are mediocre at best and utterly atrocious at worst. There are the exceptions, costal towns like Whitstable that have been gentrified by DFLs or yankee-doodle tourist traps like Canterbury. However, most are just dreary industrial estates with housing like Sittingbourne and **** h3ll holes like Chatham.
In every garden, there is a spot where the cat digs and drops a log. In Kent, that’s Sheerness-on-sea. The majestic crapital of the Isle of Sheppey kicks off our list of shame. Fun fact, several years ago more people signed a petition to bring KFC to the Island than voted in local elections.
9. Slough
We think Berkshire is one of the dreariest counties in England. In terms of towns, there are painfully average ones like Reading and it only goes down hill from there. Then there is Slough. Despite it’s desperate regeneration attempts to shake off its bleak image, Ricky Gervais encapsulated its brutalist new town grim with ‘The Office’ before giving up and writing lame punching-down anti-woke “gags” for the educationally subnormal. It’s only 25 miles from Hampstead to Slough. Ricky could move there and be the king amongst his people.
8. New Addington
Lots of large towns have a dangling tagnut tucked out of the way from the town centre. Brighton has Whitehawk, Hull has Bransholme but Croydon in south London has its very own called New Addington far, far from Purley Way. Over the last 30 years former council estates have gone from vibrant well maintained working class communities to crumbling slums. Social Housing Associations have merged to form mega organisations who despite their name, do not give a flying **** about their social housing stock. They want that shared ownership top-whack-rent new build fat cash. The people who did take up Thatcher on her bribe to rip-up working class stable housing and hand it to their class enemies, have now sold their ex-council house to Samuel Leeds types who are definitely NOT v3rminous slumlord house-of-cards psycho-filth toy-town Hoogstratens but fine upstanding “entrepreneurs” . If this cancer that has ravaged England had a prime example to be biopsied, it would be New Addington.
7. Luton
Our first of the yearly vote winners to make it into our definitive Top 10. The absolute dregs of England’s M25 satellite towns, comes in at unlucky No.7. The local press and council are always up in arms when the public consistently voted for this town, but we think we are being generous. Luton is *****, but there are worse towns. Saying that though, what can you say about a town that spawned a racist fash grifter like Tommy Robinson (aka Waxy Lemon) and the incel insecure gym-bro misogynists godhead, Andrew Tate.
6. Dover
Another one of our previous vote winners, it’s the second entry from Kent and another port town you want to get out of as quickly as humanly possible.
Thanks to the weaponised nostalgia for a Britain-that-never-was, this country’s swinging sixties sh!tbags gave it the biggest self-inflicted punch in the testicles known as Brexit. Thanks to this, it’s now a lot slower to extricate oneself from this hole. Dover, once described as a herpetic sore on Britannia’s ****, is now a rolling road block especially for lorries. Slow clap for every flag-shagging boomer who thought of that rose-tinted 1960’s white-nationalist-monoculture fantasy that Sky, the BBC, GBNews and other right-wing Fa-ridge platforming legacy media outlets lovingly shat into their brains every day for years, on the day of the referendum. All so the already obscenely rich could short the pound and stash their cash safely offshore without being subject to anti money laundering EU legislation. This entry is dedicated to all those suckers who ‘just wanted their country back’. Now you can admire its baron beauty around Ashford for an extra hour on the M20. Slow. Clap.
5. Hull
We are at the halfway point and in at 5 is a iLiveHere leviathan. Voted the worst place to live in England three times, Kingston upon Hull has, and it’s making us ill even to write this, got a bit better. *cough*
4. Peterborough
We could not have a definitive Top10 without featuring ‘Pe-borough’ to use the local parlance. The anti-fan favourite has won the public vote god knows how many times and has come close most other years. This Cambridgeshire carbuncle on the English landscape seems to be everyone’s place they love to hate and who can blame them. A 1960’s new town that on the superficial surface has everything a resident could want except a cultural soul. There are some towns where the residents make it, but for Peterborough they absolutely break it… and then vote for it year after year after year!
3. Portsmouth
Ok. This maybe a bit harsh, but we have put Portsmouth in the bronze position purely because we personally hate it. Yeah there are worse towns than this place but it’s typical of military dormitories like Aldershot and Chatham. Compared to most towns they are absolutely culturally moribund and let’s be honest, a bit ch4vvy to use an archaic expression. For our younger readers, these towns are ‘full of roadmen’. You can apply a quick test to see if your town falls into this category of depressing urban beige by googling where you can get vegan food. If your only option is the spoons or similar chain pub, congratulations, you’ve washed up in a ‘Portsmouth’. For the boomers muttering ‘woke nonsense’ under their breath while reading that, we’re talking about where you live, YES WHERE YOU LIVE. NO, STARMER’S NOT RESIGNING ON TUESDAY! The only good thing this Hampshire hole has going for it is a good road network back to liberal civilisation like Brighton and the ability to sail off into the sunset.
2. Blackpool
This is where ‘**** just got real’ as they say. Blackpool is no joke. Behind the pleasure beach and the bright lights of the gaudy Seafront is one of the most crime ridden and run-down decaying towns in the whole country. 7 out of the top 10 most deprived Lower Super Output Areas in the country are in Blackpool according to the 2019 English index of multiple deprivation, the year the government gave up doing these statistics because people could see how the country is going around the U-bend. However, Blackpool is not an isolated occurrence. There are many seaside towns going to wrack and ruin where the pier is about to get an unexpected fire… again.
1. Clacton-on-sea
Famous for its poverty safari Youtuber’s wet dream that is Jaywick, this is not why Clackers is No.1. It is quite similar to Blackpool, but instead of a vast underclass living in crumbling almost derelict victorian terraces, in Clacton the slumlords prefer to rent out static homes/caravans. Lots more money to be made by the p4r4site class selling utilities back to the residents at double the already exorbitant energy prices in a contractually captive, over-a-barrel market. Clacton is No.1 for a very specific reason and it’s the same reason Farage picked the town to exploit. It has the dubious honour of not only being one of the poorest (2019 EIMD) in the country, but one of the least educated (2021 Census) too. It is ground zero for the white-supremacist populist fascist uprising in this country, that’s coming to you in 5 years time. A town where the majority are ‘stop the boats’ insular, ignorant and gullible morons. Fake patriots who would make Churchill spin in his grave by welcoming the political polices that were the core of the National Front’s manifestos in the 1970’s. Provincial racists who think 30p Lee Anderson is ‘just telling it like it is’ when it comes to Sadiq Khan. This is why Clacton will be the cherry on top of our final sh!te cake.
