Where our numbers come from

Every figure on the site comes from public data that councils, police forces and government bodies publish anyway. We just put it somewhere you'd look.

• Our anti-social behaviour figures come from police.uk.
• Our criminal damage and arson figures come from police.uk.
• Our other crime figures come from police.uk.
• Greater Manchester Police don't send theirs to police.uk, so Greater Manchester's come from the Home Office.
• Scotland's crime and anti-social behaviour come from Police Scotland.
• Serious road crashes come from the Department for Transport's road safety data, on data.gov.uk.
• Sewage spills come from the water companies' own storm overflow monitoring, as published in the event duration monitoring returns.
• Scotland's sewage spills come from Scottish Water's overflow monitoring.
• Air quality comes from Defra's modelled pollution maps, on UK-AIR.
• Food hygiene ratings come from the Food Standards Agency.
• Takeaway hygiene ratings come from the Food Standards Agency too.
• In Scotland, food hygiene results come from Food Standards Scotland's inspection scheme.
• Public toilets come from the Toilet Map.
• Library closures come from Arts Council England and the government's 2016 list of libraries.
• The shops (pubs, bookies, vape shops, Greggs and the rest) come from OpenStreetMap.
• Rain and sunshine come from the Met Office.
• Broadband speeds come from Ofcom's Connected Nations figures.
• Parks and play spaces come from OS Open Greenspace.
• Deliberate fires come from the Home Office's fire incident figures and StatsWales for Wales.
• Scotland's deliberate fires come from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
• Bank branch and cash machine closures, and banking hubs, come from LINK, the cash machine network.
• Bathing water ratings come from the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.
• Scotland's bathing water ratings come from SEPA.
• Swimming pools in England come from Sport England's Active Places.
• Serious pollution incidents in England come from the Environment Agency.
• Buildings and places at risk come from Historic England's Heritage at Risk register.
• Evening and Sunday buses come from the timetables bus companies publish on the Bus Open Data Service.
• Reported problems (potholes, fly-tipping, dog fouling and the rest) are what people sent to FixMyStreet.
• Fly-tipping comes from Defra and StatsWales.
• Recycling rates come from Defra and StatsWales.
• Empty homes come from the housing ministry and StatsWales.
• Council tax comes from the housing ministry and StatsWales.
• Road condition in England comes from the Department for Transport's road condition statistics.
• Complaints against English councils come from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
• Scotland's recycling, road condition and street cleanliness come from the Local Government Benchmarking Framework.
• Scotland's council tax comes from the Scottish Government.
• Scotland's empty homes come from National Records of Scotland.
• Complaints against Scottish councils come from the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.
• Towns, their edges and how many people live in them come from the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey.
• Scotland's towns and their people come from National Records of Scotland.
• Postcodes and place names in the search come from Ordnance Survey.
• The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap.

We last pulled the figures in October 2026. How the score works says what goes into the Crap Score.