We dwell within the so-called ‘greatest city in Britain,’ however there’s a draw back: Locals reveal what life is REALLY like in lauded market city

Living in the quaint rural medieval market town voted the best place to live in Britain has its downsides, locals told Mail Online this weekend after their home topped a list of the finest places to live in the country. 

Safron Waldon in Essex was named last week as the overall winner in The Sunday Times’ Best Places to Live 2025 report.

According to the report it ‘has been desirable since the spice that gave it its name was first planted there during the reign of Edward III. It is now commended for its historical looks, excellent state schools, rich cultural offerings and emerging food scene.

However residents said this weekend that their town’s popularity had been met with a preopnderance of new coffee shops on the high street and every pub in the town is ‘going gastro’. 

Others cited traffic congestion on the small roads, poor broadband service, too many potholes and a lack of mobile phone reception as factors which detracted from the market town’s charms.  

But there were some positives when MailOnline visited last week as people praised police for their fast response due to a fully-manned station – despite being in a low crime area. 

The rural town, which has an average house price of £607,100, is set to the backdrop of the rolling countryside and was named last week as the overall winner in The Sunday Times’ Best Places to Live 2025 report. 

Saffron Walden is littered with historic buildings, with St Mary’s Church, the largest parish church in Essex, at its centre.

The town has a beautiful historic square, featuring a town hall built in 1761, which was extensively remodelled and extended in 1879.

Shaun Crawford, 59, is a former healthcare assistant who lives in the town centre and loves it there. But it’s far from perfect, he said.

He said: ‘It’s very safe here. You’re pretty much looked after by the people around you. It’s a pretty close community.

‘I moved here from Ipswich in 2006. Ipswich is a run-down town and there’s lots of crime there. We have a police station here and they’re quick on the response.

‘In Ipswich, there’s just one unit.’

He added: ‘Transport is okay if you’re going to Cambridge. You can get a return to Cambridge for £6 and it’s fairly reliable but it’s a bit hit and miss if you want to go anywhere else.

‘The broadband speed is pretty eratic. There’s old pipework around here.

‘Mobile phone speed varies. Where I live at the moment I can be on the phone and without warning it goes ‘beep beep’ and it cuts off.

‘To be fair, there’s a nice collection of shops on the High Street, but it’s overrun with coffee shops. There are just too many.

‘How many coffees do you want, guys?’

Mr Crawford was ‘very impressed’ when he first moved to the town but said ‘things changed when people moved in’.

‘They need to spend more money on the potholes and the paths on the streets,’ he said. ‘They are all uneven and you run the risk of injury.’

He said his late father, Edward, visited him and struggled on the uneven streets, as do other disabled family members.

Mr Crawford said: ‘The pavements are a falls hazard. I’ve told the council about it but it gets swept under the carpet. When my dad has been here a couple of times he’s really struggled.

‘How do you survive here on these paths if you’re an old person? The paths are so dangerous.’  

Maria Pallet, 52, university lecturer, was with her archaeologist daughter Sophie Pallet, 29, who has just bought a house in Saffron Walden.

Maria, who lives in Thaxted, said: ‘I have known Saffron Walden my whole life. It’s got boutique independent shops. It’s so different from everywhere else. I’m only 20 minutes down the road but this is where I’d like to live.

‘It’s quite a low crime area. I used to be a police officer. They’ve got police station here.

‘A lot of places have lost their police stations but here they still have a full turnout of police officers.

‘Carver Army barracks is up the road. It’s quite nice they’re around. It’s Army families. It makes it feel safer.

‘A few police stations have been closed down but this is a rural area so there would be a poor response time without it.

‘Saffron Walden has got a lot of beat officers.’

Sophie said: ‘I like the fact it is a big village and a small town. Someone sent me the survey after the house sale went through and I thought it was quite reassuring.’

David Jackson, 51, manages a team of software developers. He has lived in the town centre with his wife and daughter for 14 years.

Mr Jackson said he loves the town but: ‘Taxis are a bit of a nightmare, especially post Covid. It’s become much harder to get them.

‘You need to have a ring around before you can get a taxi.

‘The nearest train station is Audley End, about a mile and a half away. You need to walk or cycle there.

‘Some buses are reliable, but more are awful.’

He praised the high street ‘but you certainly notice there’s been a reduction in clothes shops, the same as everywhere’.

Mr Jackson said: ‘My perpetual gripe with any pub is they seem to go gastro.’

Nina Jones, 70, lives in Newport, a village outside Saffron Walden. She grew up in town and her family lives there.

She said: ‘My five grandchildren all live here. My mother lived here until she died.

‘I went to the teacher training college and I’m in a WhatsApp group with some of the old students and they said ‘Nina, you still live in that wonderful place’ and I said ‘It’s okay, but I do not think it’s the best’.

‘We used to call it ‘Suffering Boredom’ when we were kids.’

She said: ‘Some of the clothes shops have closed recently. New Look has closed. There aren’t really any shops for the youngsters to go in and browse.

‘There was a Clarks shop that had been here since we were kids and that’s closed recently.

‘There are a lot of coffee shops and it’s a shame because when my grandsons, who are 16 and 14, come here there’s not anywhere really to find somewhere to eat at 4pm.’

Mike Hibbs, 70, is a retired architect and has been the town’s Mayor twice, once in 1993 and once in 2007.

He said: ‘I moved here when I was six. For some people it’s the best place to live in the UK. But it’s very difficult if you’re not reasonably well-off because house prices are so high.

‘I am a trustee of the Alms Houses and when I was young they used to be only for old people, but now it’s for people over 18.

‘Most older people who have properties are well-off and do not need the Alms Houses and younger people cannot get on the property ladder.

‘Children [who have grown up in Saffron Walden] move to Bury St Edmunds or Haverhill.’

He said: ‘The schools are excellent. From my point of view, the town has everything we are looking for, but we do not have much in the way of discount shops.

‘The independents are wonderful but they are looking for the better well-off clientele.

‘The food bank is very well provided for.’

He added: ‘I run a youth outreach project and we have seen quite an issue with some of the young people being excluded from school.

‘SEND provision is not good. The emphasis [in schools] is on academic achievement.

‘I think it’s hard to be poor when you are surrounded by wealth. You only have to look at the cars in the car park to see there’s many [wealthy] people here.’

Julie Smith, 62, is a retired customer services manager who lives in the town with her husband Martyn.

She said: ‘I moved here nearly two years ago from Brighton. We lived in a flat.

‘I moved here because I had heard it was a good place. I did a lot of research to see what was the best market town to live in.

‘I love it. But it’s hard when you’ve lived in a place like Brighton. Saffron Walden is a much quieter pace of life.

‘If you want a coffee after 6pm you really can’t get one. Saturday is the best day. It’s quiet on Monday.

‘I’m glad to have moved here, but if I could have afforded a house in Hove I would have stayed.’

Andrew Walker, 55, grew up in a council house in Saffron Walden. He’s one of 12 siblings and only two of them remain in the town.

He said: ‘I moved away 15 years ago. I grew up here but I could not afford to buy a house here and moved to Haverhill. It’s very expensive here [in Saffron Walden].

‘I moved into a council house when I met my partner and it came to time to buy we went for shared ownership and that was our foothold [onto the housing ladder]. But buying a complete home was too expensive.’

The father of two grown-up sons added: ‘There’s a lot more people here now generally. It was always a bad place for driving in peak times. They’ve not improved the infrastructure and it needs it.

‘There have always been traffic jams here and now there are a lot more.

‘I come back here to see family. My older son thinks it’s quite a pretentious place. It’s always been like this. I would describe it as being a little up itself.’

Dillon Kohn, 29, lives in Saffron Walden with her fiancé, Taylor, and daughter Meadow, aged one, and son Leonardo, aged three.

She’s a designer and runs print and card company called Leo and The Sun.

She said: ‘We moved here from Newport and have been here five years. I love it so much.

‘It feels like a really safe place and family-friendly place to live. People take the time to get to know you.’

One visitor to the town, who didn’t want to be identified, said: ‘The traffic coming in was horrendous.

‘There’s big long queues in both directions trying to get into the town centre. The town centre has a lot of no access parts. The centre bit is very very hard to get into.

‘It’s not best-signed in terms of parking. If you come here on a regular basis it’s probably quite easy but for someone coming to the area for the first time it’s quite difficult.’

John Harford, 76, is a retired lorry driver. He has lived in the town for 18 years with his wife. 

He said: ‘When I heard we’d won best place to live I thought ‘We’ve won it again’. We are always in the top ten. It is a very nice place to live.

‘It’s like everywhere. You get the best bits and the bad bits.

‘The bad bits are the elements of drugs in the town. We’ve had reports in the last month or so of raids. The police raided the drug houses and made four or five arrests.

‘I’ve only heard about this, but two or three years ago there was trouble between rival drug dealers. But I cannot vouch for that.

‘Everybody is reasonable well-off. We’re not a deprived place.’

He said: ‘The bus service is a big downside [to living in Saffron Walden]. You’ve got about one an hour, and that’s everywhere.

‘It’s always been like that. After 8pm you very seldom see a bus.’

Mr Harford also complained of rarely being able to get an appointment at one of the town’s two doctor surgeries. 

‘You cannot get an appointment unless you do an eConsult which is something older people cannot manage,’ he said.

‘We’ve got our coffee shops, and nine nail bars at the moment. We’ve got 12 or 14 hairdressers. We’ve got an abundance of small shops.

‘The trouble is they’re all virtually the same.’

Maddy Raven, 27, and wife Lauren, 29, live in the town in rented accommodation. They’ve been here together for two years.

Maddy, a marketing director, said: ‘I grew up here and moved to Cambridge and moved back here because we love it so much. We want to start raising a family here.

‘It gives me the vibe of a seaside town without the sea. When I was a teenager I never wanted to live here. But it has a lovely feel and feels quite safe.

‘But it’s difficult to park and the cafes are always busy.’

Lauren, a teaching assistant at a primary school, said: ‘The houses are very expensive. They’re building more and more.

‘The high school is Saffron Walden County High but the catchment now is just the town. It used to go really out. Now, even if you live in the town you’re not necessarily in the school’s catchment area.

‘The villages have secondary schools so you might end up sending your child to one of them.

‘I’ve heard that people rent in the town just to get their children into the County High school. We would have to send our children to Newport to school.

‘There are a lot of new builds. In Debden, the primary school where I work, there are children coming from the town because the town schools are full so they have to go to the Village schools.’

Maddy said: ‘The independent shops thrive because of the character of the town, but there are a few more chains now.

‘There’s a Greggs up there [in the town centre] and people were very angry that it came.

‘There’s a certain class here. When I grew up here it was very middle class and upper class but now it’s a lot more mixed.

‘The house prices do not really allow that [poor people to buy in Saffron Walden]. It will only get more expensive because everyone is reading about it and making a lot of TikToks about it and it’s a very well-known town now.’

She said: ‘We’ve got a Premier Inn now on a development with Costa, Aldi, B&M and a Pure Gym. That’s on the edge of town where houses are being built right now.

‘People do not like that but people like Aldi because it’s always busy. There used to be just a Waitrose.’

As well as crowning Saffron Walden, the judges picked ten regional winners. The winner for the east of England was Chelmsford in Essex praised for being a ‘commuter hub’ with excellent schools and transport connections. 

While Walthamstow was crowned the best place to live in London due to it being ‘diverse, vibrant and cool without being frosty’, living up to its name which is believed to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon for ‘the welcome place’.

In the Midlands Ilmington in Warwickshire won after judges described it as a blissful example of village life, teeming with good pubs, sports clubs and community groups. 

Woolton in Liverpool was decided as the best place to live in the northwest of England, where as Ilkley in West Yorkshire was victorious for the northeast of England.

In comparison Petersfield in Hampshire was crowned the best place to live in the southeast because of its family friendly atmosphere, offering excellent schools, plenty of sporty and arty pursuits and a caring community.

Chew Valley, Somerset was the best place to live in the southwest because of its unspoilt lakes and orchards, burbling streams and picture-perfect russet-hued villages.

And finally the the winner in Wales was Gower Peninsula, Swansea because of its ‘cool, creative and sustainable independent businesses’ popping up in the villages and hamlets in the wilder corners of the peninsula.