Benjamin Disraeli once said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” And this week – as if to prove the statesman’s point – the Royal Mail hailed SN9 – Tidworth – as the most desirable postcode area in England in which to live.
The new status of our neighbouring town may come as a surprise to residents of the Marlborough area, who pass through it on the way to Salisbury, and rarely stop. Certainly reaction to the news on social media was, to say the least, incredulous.
Yet the finding – published to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the roll-out of postcodes – is proof that you can make statistics demonstrate virtually anything.
The Royal Mail commissioned the Centre for Economic and Business Research to undertake the survey, taking into account employment opportunities, health levels, education and training opportunities, crime levels, homelessness, household overcrowding and ease of accessing local services, the quality of the physical environment, and housing affordability – the relationship between average house prices and average annual earnings.
The researchers collated figures from a range of sources, including local and national government statistics.
The reason Tidworth punches so high above its weight is due in the main to its status as a ‘super-garrison’ – the result of the Army concentrating its forces close to Salisbury Plain.
The Army has been in Tidworth since the late 19th century, but the town’s fortunes as a base for the military really took off with the advent of the First World War.
The 21st century creation of the super-garrison saw tens of millions of pounds of public and private investment poured into Tidworth: a new medical centre was co-funded by the MOD and the NHS, while the MOD opened a leisure centre with Olympic-sized swimming pool, putting every other leisure centre in the county to shame. Operated by Wiltshire Council, the facility is affectionally referred to by its initials – TLC.
The unloved Castledown school was closed and the independent Wellington College took over the provision of comprehensive secondary education under the Wellington Academy brand.
The £35 million pound Castledown Business Park was built by Wiltshire Council to provide employment for demobbed servicemen and to help them put their skills to use by setting up their own businesses.
And the arrival of a huge Tesco supermarket in 2007 funded a renaissance of neighbouring Station Road (despite the name, the town no longer has a station).
Housing – whilst vastly improved for Army families since the turn of the millennium – is hardly what most estate agents would term ‘desirable’.
But the researchers didn’t look at the number of des-res properties: they looked at the affordability index.
And as a Marlborough News Online report of the topic found last week, Tidworth has the lowest average house price in the county – £148,571 compared to Marlborough’s £309,445 average.
Persimmon Homes is currently building 600 houses to the north of the town – a development called Riverbourne Fields. Prices for two-bedroom properties range from £129,000 to £159,000.
It’s easy to see how this level of investment, along with the affordablility of private housing, ticked a lot of boxes for the CEBR researchers. But whether the town is ‘desirable’ is still open to interpretation – despite what the Royal Mail says.
