The Villages Around Bognor Regis, Compared

Felpham and North Bersted get a bus every 15 minutes, Sundays included; Elmer gets none on Sundays. Middleton-on-Sea has the best-rated bathing water, and Aldwick Bay, Elmer Sands and Pagham Beach have private roads or rules that affect removal lorries.

This guide compares them on the things that actually differ: doctors, schools, buses, private estates, beaches, flood policy, people and prices. For what each place feels like, see our guide to living in Bognor Regis.

Which village has the most on its doorstep?

Felpham, Rose Green and North Bersted each have their own GP surgery and state primary schooling. Felpham has two primaries, Bishop Tufnell and Downview. Rose Green has an infant school and a junior school; the junior school was rated Outstanding in 2024. North Bersted’s surgery is Bersted Green, and Bartons Primary is in the same parish.

Pagham and Middleton-on-Sea have branch surgeries run from practices elsewhere, and they work very differently. Pagham’s branch, the Arthur Griffiths Clinic, is open 8.30 to 11.30am on weekdays and is run from Grove House Surgery in Rose Green. Middleton’s branch belongs to a practice in Yapton and is open 8.30am to 6.30pm on weekdays, closed for lunch.

Aldwick, Nyetimber and Elmer have no surgery or state primary in the village itself. Aldwick’s parish does include West Meads Surgery and the Rose Green schools, but they are a walk away from the old village and the Aldwick Bay Estate.

For secondary school, the main state schools nearby are Felpham Community College and The Regis School in Bognor. Both were judged good by Ofsted (Felpham, Regis), and both offered a place to every applicant for September 2025, according to the county’s admissions booklet. When a school is full, its admission rules decide who gets in; for county-run schools such as Felpham, children in the catchment rank above those outside it. Check yours on the county’s catchment map.

Can you live in the villages without a car?

In Felpham and North Bersted, easily. Route 700 runs every 15 minutes in the daytime, Sundays included, and through the night between Bognor and Chichester, which takes in North Bersted. Felpham’s last weekday bus leaves just after 1am, and on Sundays the morning service starts at 5.32am.

Aldwick, Rose Green, Nyetimber and Pagham are on route 600 to Chichester: every 20 minutes Monday to Saturday, every 30 on Sundays. Route 63 runs hourly Monday to Saturday and not at all on Sundays.

What do the private estates mean on moving day?

Several villages contain private estates with their own roads and rules. Those rules bind your removals firm as much as your builder, so they are worth knowing before you book.

Aldwick Bay’s rules go further than vehicles. Residents bought the estate outright after the Great Storm of 1987, and a residents’ company now owns its roads, verges and beach. Each house carries a share in that company, returned through your solicitor when you sell. The rules ask for dogs on leads and tidy gardens. Power tools are allowed only from 8am to 5.30pm on weekdays. There are no bonfires, fireworks, routine parking on estate roads, or short-term and holiday lets.

Middleton’s neighbourhood plan, made in January 2026, calls Yapton Road, the main way in, “dangerously narrow” for the lorries that use it.

None of this makes the estates hard to move into. We check weight limits, gates and road widths at the survey, as our Bognor Regis removals page explains.

Moving to one of the Bognor Regis villages? Ask us for a quote and tell us the estate name, if there is one. We’ll check its rules before the day.

Where can you park?

None of the villages is in a residents’ parking zone. Bognor’s controlled parking zone covers 56 streets, all in the town centre and along the seafront. In the villages, loading a lorry needs no residents’ permit.

For the beach, Arun council has free car parks at Links Avenue and Grassmere in Felpham and Shrubbs Field in Middleton-on-Sea, with a 24-hour maximum stay for now. West Park in Aldwick is free for two hours, then paid. Culver Road in Felpham and Rock Gardens on Aldwick Road are paid. Pagham, Nyetimber, Rose Green, North Bersted and Elmer have no Arun council car park.

Are the beaches the same?

No. All of them are shingle at the top with some sand at low tide, but the Environment Agency’s profiles tell them apart. Middleton-on-Sea has “large expanses of sand” at low tide. Felpham is groyned shingle with sand and rock pools at low water. Pagham is mostly shingle, with a line of beach houses behind it.

Water quality is where the beaches differ. Middleton-on-Sea has been rated Excellent every year it has been classified since 2015. The Bognor Regis (Aldwick) bathing water, west of the pier, has been rated Poor four years running, so signs advise against bathing there each season. Beaches stay open whatever the rating.

The rules changed in November 2025. After five Poor years in a row, the Environment Agency must advise ministers whether the water can realistically be brought up to standard. Advice against bathing becomes permanent if ministers agree it can’t, if they don’t back a clean-up, or if it still fails after a set period.

In 2026, RNLI lifeguards patrolled Littlehampton’s East Beach daily in summer, and Bognor Regis beach, east of the pier, on summer weekends and bank holidays. The village beaches had none.

Aldwick Bay’s beach is private: the residents’ company owns it down to the average spring high-tide line.

How exposed are the villages to flooding and erosion?

The Environment Agency has named flood warning areas for the coastal parts of Pagham and Elmer, for coastal Bognor (including Felpham, North and South Bersted and Shripney) and for Felpham on the Aldingbourne Rife. No area is named after Middleton-on-Sea, Aldwick, Nyetimber or Rose Green. That is not the same as no risk.

Arun District Council is blunt about the limits. Its coastal guidance says there are no published data on erosion risk for individual homes. Neither the council nor the Environment Agency has a duty to protect the coast. If you are buying within 200 metres of the high-water mark, the council will give you its coastal information through local land charges. On this coast, ask for it.

Pagham Beach Estate has its own planning rules. Under an interim framework agreed in October 2021, no new development is permitted there. Replacing a building is allowed only where the flood and erosion risk is not rising and no more people will live there, with floor levels at least 300mm above predicted flood levels. If you plan to extend, that framework decides what is possible.

Elsewhere, a scheme led by the Environment Agency has significantly reduced the flood risk to 88 properties in Pagham’s far south-west corner. As the council itself puts it: “There can be no guarantee that homes are 100% safe.”

In Elmer, the storms of November 1984 and April 1985 brought the worst flooding the Elmer Sands estate had seen. Eight rock islands were then built offshore, finished in September 1993 at a cost of £5.5 million.

Who lives there, and what do homes cost?

Aldwick, Middleton-on-Sea and Pagham are retirement country: around four in ten residents are 65 or over, about twice the share for England. Most households own their homes, and in those three villages more than half own outright. Detached houses make up more than half of homes in Aldwick, Felpham and Middleton, while in Bognor’s town wards almost half are flats.

Aldwick is the dearest area, North Bersted the cheapest. Felpham, younger and better served, costs about £90,000 less than Aldwick. For other price measures, see our practical guide to moving to Bognor Regis, and if you are coming from the capital, our guide to moving from London to Bognor Regis.

Which village near Bognor Regis suits you?

Downsizing? Our guide to retiring to Bognor Regis covers that move in detail. Chosen your village? See our house removals and storage services, or ask us for a quote.

Why are the addresses misleading?

Village names here don’t follow parish lines. Rose Green sits in Aldwick parish; Nyetimber in Pagham parish; Elmer in Middleton-on-Sea parish. Bersted Green Primary, despite its name, is in Bognor Regis parish, not Bersted. Check the parish and the walking distance, not the name on the envelope.

About this guide. Every fact was checked against its source in October 2026, then checked again independently. Key sources are linked in the text, charts and tables. We don’t name shops, pubs or bus companies.