Lancaster named as the 9th best city to raise a baby in the UK according to Play Like Mum

A study carried out by the toy company, Play Like Mum, has revealed the best and worst cities in the UK to raise a baby, and Lancaster came out in 9th place.

Based on child care costs, over-all safety, pram-friendliness and how many child-friendly restaurants there are, Lancaster scored a total of 5.15, and was the only North West city to make the top 10.

Play Like Mum researched the cost of childcare and safety rating of 41 UK cities using Numbeo, and found that the average cost of childcare per month in Lancaster is £933 a month, whilst the city had an overall safety score of 53.95/100.

Lancaster also had a pram-friendly score of 2.13 out of 10, and 14 child-friendly restaurants per 10,000 people.

The 'accessibility score' was calculated by searching the number of public toilets with baby-changing facilities in each city and dividing these figures per 10,000 of the population, and adding this number to the total of ramp-accessible parks, shops and children’s play areas, as shown on the site AccessAble.

In order to calculate the final factor, Play Like Mum collated the number of ‘child-friendly’ restaurants and attractions listed on TripAdviser as ‘good for children’ in each city, and divided this per 10,000 residents, before then using the Office of National Statistics Table 420 of Household projections for England, to determine the number of households in each city with children per 10,000 people.

Overall, the best place to raise a baby in the UK was named as Bath, with a score of 7.09, followed by Wakefield, Canterbury, Brighton & Hove, Lichfield, Winchester, York, St Albans, Lancaster and finally Lincoln in tenth place with a score of 5.00.

Meanwhile Preston came joint eighth in the cheapest city for childcare table, with an average cost of £650 per month.

However when all the factors were combined, Preston was named as the sixth worst city to raise a child, with an overall score of 3.24; with only Coventry, London, Nottingham Wolverhampton and Birmingham scoring worse.