Community spirit: The friendliest cities in the UK

How do you know you’re part of a community? Like if you had to create a top five listicle what would it say? Feel free to have a quick think on this exact topic or just cast your eyes to the graphic below where we answer that exact question.

And how does the giffgaff community fair when it comes to community spirit? Well, if you’ve been knocking around our forums for any length of time you probably wouldn’t be too surprised to hear we did pretty well.

Once we knew what made up a good community we began to wonder if a communal spirit was indeed alive and well in the gasp, none digital world, and if it does exist, just what do people consider as a friendly, communal act? To help us answer these pressing questions (and to figure out where we will be booking our next UK holiday) we collaborated with some dapper data scientists to find out where the friendliest places to live were within the UK, and what makes them so? The results are very interesting reading indeed.

Signs of community spirit

So, what are your thoughts on what creates community spirit? Do you think something is missing from the list? If so, let us know. I, personally, feel there could have been a bit more around pet-sitting in there, but I’m a sucker for four paws and a tail.

The friendliest city in the UK

This leads us to the burning question: Where is the friendliest city in the UK? Well, drum roll…

An amazing 98% of people in Nottingham believe they are on good terms with their neighbours. They were just ahead of other friendly towns Cardiff (97%) and Newcastle (95%). And perhaps it’s true that Northerners are more friendly as there were only three southern towns in the top 10 friendliest cities, Oxford, Brighton and Plymouth and all of those were outside the top 5 - controversial and I expect a few people might disagree.

They all compare well to Britain’s least friendly city, Sheffield where only 17% of people say they’re friendly with their local community. On a local level, Britain seems to be in good shape in general. Eight out of 10 Brits believe that communities work well together in Britain.

We’re sure many of you may have a few opinions on the above - especially those of you from Sheffield. Maybe you yourself have done something in your local community to make it more inclusive for others? If so, make sure to share your thoughts and stories on our social channels and keep the conversation going - let’s share the community spirit.

And don’t forget to check our giffgaff community, where you can stop by and have a chat with your fellow giffgaff members, give and receive great help and support.