Gera Settle Score — methodology
The Gera Settle Score answers one question: for your occupation and family size, which English local authority is the best place to both live and work? It is computed live from 40 occupations across all 128 covered local authorities. Every input is a real Open Government Licence v3.0 government figure (June 2026); nothing is modelled or estimated.
The four sub-scores
Each local authority gets four sub-scores, normalised 0–100 across all covered areas using min–max scaling:
- Affordability — average sold house price (HM Land Registry) divided by the ONS ASHE full-time regional median salary for your occupation, giving “years of pay to buy”. Fewer years scores higher.
- Schools — the percentage of state schools rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted in that local authority.
- Safety — Home Office police recorded crimes per 1,000 residents (inverted: less crime scores higher).
- GP access — NHS England Appointments in General Practice access score for the area.
Family weighting
The four sub-scores are combined with a weight vector that depends on family size. Larger families weight schools and safety more heavily and affordability slightly less:
| Family | Affordability | Schools | Safety | GP access |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No children | 45% | 5% | 25% | 25% |
| 1 child | 35% | 30% | 20% | 15% |
| 2 children | 28% | 37% | 22% | 13% |
| 3+ children | 22% | 40% | 26% | 12% |
Gera Settle Score = (wafford × Affordability) + (wschools × Schools) + (wsafety × Safety) + (wgp × GP access), each sub-score on 0–100.
Worked example
Programmers and software development professionals, 2 children: the top area is Gateshead (North East) with a Gera Settle Score of 91.4/100. Inputs: regional median pay £56,340, average home £158,885 (2.8 years of pay), 96.9% Good/Outstanding schools, 90.6 crimes per 1,000, GP access 75. Sub-scores: affordability 96.4, schools 92.6, safety 92.7, GP access 75.
What is deliberately excluded
Commute time is not included. No authoritative open commute-time dataset is currently held, and Gera never estimates a number it cannot source. Rather than guess, commute is transparently excluded; if a clean official source is acquired it will be added as a fifth sub-score and version-stamped here. Local authorities that lack full-coverage data for any of the four inputs are excluded entirely — never counted as zero.
Sources
- Office for National Statistics — Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) — Office for National Statistics, April 2025 (provisional).
- HM Land Registry — UK House Price Index — HM Land Registry, April 2026.
- Ofsted — State-funded school inspections and outcomes — Ofsted, 31 May 2026.
- Home Office — Police recorded crime open data — Home Office, year ending December 2025.
- NHS England — Appointments in General Practice — NHS England, April 2026.
All sources Open Government Licence v3.0. Normalisation envelopes: schools 58.3–100%, crime 52.4–572.8 per 1,000, GP access 0–100.
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