Crap Towns / Cambridgeshire / Sawston
Sawston
1/100Crap Score
Too small for the table, which starts at 10,000 people, but it still scores 1. 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
No big shop. Big moan.
Old leather and paper village with low crime and no proper supermarket.
Sawston made leather, parchment and paper, and there's a Tudor hall and the very first village college. Crime's about half the typical town's and nobody sets fire to anything. What it hasn't got is a big supermarket, and locals have never stopped going on about it.
So instead it's got nearly four times the typical town's charity shops per head, and a drive to Cambridge for anything you can't buy second-hand. The new houses keep coming. The supermarket doesn't.
What the score is made of
Ten ingredients, each marked out of 100. Higher is crapper.
Sawston's 72 for broadband means it's crapper than 72% of towns.
- Broadband72/10010.7% of premises can't get gigabit, January 2026, and 14.2% across the South Cambridgeshire council area
- Air pollution37/1005.8 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 7.0 of fine particles, 2024 average
- Food hygiene27/1000.0% rated 0 to 2, of the 34 food businesses with a rating
- Serious road collisions18/1001.4 per 10,000 people a year, fatal and serious, 2021 to 2025
- Fly-tipping17/1005.9 incidents per 1,000 people a year, South Cambridgeshire council area, 2022-23 to 2024-25
- Deliberate fires14/100
- Criminal damage and arson12/1004.3 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
- Rain9/100113 days of rain a year, at least 1 mm, 1991 to 2020 average
- Anti-social behaviour6/1007.3 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
- Sewage spills2/1000.0 spill hours per 10,000 people a year, storm overflows within 1 km, 2023 to 2025
| Pos | Town | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | St Ives | 42 |
| In danger of becoming nice from here down.6 | Chatteris | 29 |
| 7 | March | 28 |
| 8 | Ely | 24 |
| 9 | St Neots | 18 |
| 10 | Whittlesey | 17 |
| 11 | Soham | 14 |
| 12 | Cambourne | 1 |
| – | Sawston | 1 |
Below the dashed line: in danger of becoming nice.
Sawston by numbers
Thinking of moving here? Don't say we didn't warn you.
Crime, muck and dodgy water
- 38.7 crimes per 1,000 people a year (September 2023 to August 2026) Better: 49% lower than the typical town's 76.2
- 2 reports of potholes and bad road surfaces on FixMyStreet, the most reported problem in the year to October 2026 Better: 2.8 per 10,000 people, 18% lower than the typical town's 3.4
What's left on the high street
- 3 pubs, 8 hairdressers, 4 charity shops, 1 bookmaker, 1 bank on the map here as of 1 October 2026
- 1 public swimming pool open Better: 1.4 per 10,000 people, 2x the typical English town's 0.7
- 1 place on England's Heritage at Risk register
Getting about, getting online, getting rained on
- 11.58pm last bus out on a Wednesday Worse: Earlier than the typical town's 12.14am
- 1.2% of premises can't get superfast broadband (January 2026) Worse: 2.4x the typical town's 0.5%
- 8.3% live more than 400 metres from a park or play space Better: 46% lower than the typical town's 15.5%
- 1,557 hours of sunshine a year (1991 to 2020 average) About the same: About the same as the typical town's 1,532
South Cambridgeshire council
- £2,536 Band D council tax (2026-27) Worse: £144 more than the English average
- 7% of Cambridgeshire County Council's unclassified roads should have been considered for maintenance (2025-26) Better: 56% lower than England's 16%
- 1 ombudsman complaint upheld against the council in 2025-26
- More on the council
Have a crap-off
Sawston 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.