Crap Towns / Leicestershire / Castle Donington
Castle Donington
23/100Crap Score
Too small for the table, which starts at 10,000 people, but it still scores 23. Higher scores are crapper.
Have your say
Crap Town of the Year 2026/27
See the raceThe public vote. It's separate from the Crap Score, and it closes on 31 December 2027.
Letters from the locals
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agree it's crap have defended it
Pardon? Can't hear you over the planes
An airport, a race track and a rock festival. Nobody here has had a quiet night in years.
Castle Donington has an airport, a race track and the Download festival, so nobody's had a quiet night since Monsters of Rock. The buses run all night, because the airport does. When the festival's on, every road round here stops dead and the village fills up with blokes in black T-shirts. The rest of the year the boy racers hold their car meets instead.
Otherwise it's tidy and well behaved, with a hairdresser on every corner and a kitchen problem: low hygiene ratings are three times as common as in the typical town. There's no public park, the pool shut in 2013 and the parish church is on the Heritage at Risk register. And it's Donington. Spell it Donnington and they get upset.
What the score is made of
Ten ingredients, each marked out of 100. Higher is crapper.
Castle Donington's 80 for broadband means it's crapper than 80% of towns.
- Broadband80/10016.0% of premises can't get gigabit, January 2026, and 10.5% across the North West Leicestershire council area
- Food hygiene78/1007.3% rated 0 to 2, of the 41 food businesses with a rating
- Air pollution62/1009.5 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 6.9 of fine particles, 2024 average
- Sewage spills59/100390 spill hours per 10,000 people a year, storm overflows within 1 km, 2023 to 2025
- Rain38/100123 days of rain a year, at least 1 mm, 1991 to 2020 average
- Anti-social behaviour27/10011.5 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
- Deliberate fires20/1003.1 per 10,000 people a year, April 2023 to March 2026
- Criminal damage and arson16/1004.7 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
- Fly-tipping14/1005.5 incidents per 1,000 people a year, North West Leicestershire council area, 2022-23 to 2024-25
- Serious road collisions14/1001.2 per 10,000 people a year, fatal and serious, 2021 to 2025
| Pos | Town | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Melton Mowbray | 33 |
| 6 | Leicester Forest East and Kirby Muxloe | 32 |
| 7 | Enderby and Narborough | 29 |
| 8 | Whitwick | 27 |
| – | Castle Donington | 23 |
| 9 | Shepshed | 13 |
| 10 | Hinckley | 11 |
| 11 | Mountsorrel | 10 |
| 12 | Earl Shilton | 9 |
Castle Donington by numbers
Thinking of moving here? Don't say we didn't warn you.
Crime, muck and dodgy water
- 49.5 crimes per 1,000 people a year (September 2023 to August 2026) Better: 35% lower than the typical town's 76.2
- 2 reports of abandoned vehicles on FixMyStreet, the most reported problem in the year to October 2026 Worse: 2.7 per 10,000 people, 3x the typical town's 0.9
- 3 serious pollution incidents within 1 km since 2016, the latest in 2025
What's left on the high street
- 5 pubs, 9 hairdressers, 1 vape shop on the map here as of 1 October 2026
- 1 public toilet on the map (October 2026) Worse: 1.4 per 10,000 people, 13% lower than the typical town's 1.6
- None public swimming pools open; 1 closed for good since 2010 Worse: Against the typical English town's 0.7 per 10,000 people
- 1 place on England's Heritage at Risk register
Getting about, getting online, getting rained on
- All night buses on a Wednesday Better: The typical town's last bus goes at 12.14am
- 0.8% of premises can't get superfast broadband (January 2026) Worse: 1.6x the typical town's 0.5%
- 8.2% live more than 400 metres from a park or play space, and OS maps no public park here Better: 47% lower than the typical town's 15.5%
- 1,497 hours of sunshine a year (1991 to 2020 average) About the same: About the same as the typical town's 1,532
North West Leicestershire council
- £2,418 Band D council tax (2026-27) About the same: £26 more than the English average
- 11% of Leicestershire County Council's unclassified roads should have been considered for maintenance (2025-26) Better: 31% lower than England's 16%
- 2 ombudsman complaints upheld against the council in 2025-26
- More on the council
Have a crap-off
Castle Donington against your mate's town, and a match ticket to rub it in.
- ?Fly-tippingper 1,000, council area?
- ?Anti-social behaviourper 1,000 people?
- ?Serious road crashesper 10,000 people?
- ?Sewage spillshours per 10,000 people?
- ?Food hygienerated poor?
- ?Criminal damageper 1,000 people?
- ?Dirty airµg/m³?
- ?No gigabitof premises can't get it?
- ?Deliberate firesper 10,000 people?
- ?Raindays a year?
Ten ingredients. One verdict. Who's crapper? The higher Crap Score takes it.