Moving to Worthing: Is It a Nice Place to Live? Honest Pros, Cons and Best Areas

Is Worthing a nice place to live? Its average house price is about £74,400 below the West Sussex average and Brighton is 23 to 28 minutes by train, but its recorded crime rate is the second highest of the county’s seven districts. This guide to living in Worthing sets out the pros and cons with official figures.

Figures are from official or published sources, or our own calculations from official data where stated, checked in October 2026.

Who lives in Worthing?

Worthing had 111,338 residents at the 2021 Census (113,844 by mid-2025, the ONS estimates).

At the 2021 Census a third of households were one person living alone (29.7% across West Sussex), and a quarter of adults were retired, about the same as the county. Raw Census figures show more disability than England (19.1% against 17.3%); allowing for Worthing’s older population narrows the gap to 18.2% against 17.7%. Unadjusted, 80.9% reported good or very good health (England 82.2%); age-adjusted, Worthing is slightly ahead (82.2% against 81.7%).

Sources: ONS Census 2021; Ofcom Connected Nations, January 2026 data.

House prices: what does it cost to buy in Worthing?

According to the UK House Price Index, the average house price in Worthing was £299,075 in August 2026, 5.0% lower than a year earlier and about £74,400 below the West Sussex average of £373,470. Brighton and Hove’s was £408,240; the first-time buyer average was £245,915 in Worthing and £343,329 there.

Worthing’s average has fallen about 8.9% since January 2023 (from £328,454), against 2.7% for West Sussex, while England’s rose 2.7%. By type, the August 2026 averages were £598,727 detached, £412,920 semi-detached, £328,230 terraced and £181,456 for a flat. Every type was cheaper than the West Sussex average for the same type, though for terraced and semi-detached homes the gap was under 3%. Flats are common: 35.3% of households lived in one at the 2021 Census, against 22.2% across the county.

Renting, council tax and pay

ONS figures put the average private rent at £1,300 a month in September 2026, down 0.6% on a year earlier. That is below the South East (£1,438), England (£1,466) and Brighton and Hove (£1,816), and between its neighbours Arun (£1,240) and Adur (£1,416).

Worthing’s Band D council tax is £2,456.13 for 2026/27, up 4.8%, according to the council. Bands run from £1,637.42 (A) to £4,912.26 (H), with no parish charge on top. Median full-time pay for residents was £39,467 in 2026 (provisional), against £41,140 in England; it is a survey estimate with a wide margin of error.

Jobs and work in Worthing

About 47,000 employee jobs were based in Worthing in 2024, according to provisional figures from the ONS Business Register and Employment Survey. Health and social care, which includes Worthing Hospital, is by far Worthing’s biggest sector, with 27.7% of jobs in 2024, about double the England share (13.8%). Professional, scientific and technical jobs (5.3%, against 9.6% for England) and transport and storage (2.1%, against 5.1%) are well below the England shares.

Counting the self-employed too, there were 0.83 jobs for every resident aged 16 to 64 in 2024, slightly below West Sussex (0.85) and England (0.86). In September 2026, 2,305 residents were claiming unemployment-related benefits, equal to 3.3% of residents aged 16 to 64: above West Sussex (3.1%) but below England (4.1%). The claimant count includes some people in low-paid work, so it is not the unemployment rate.

How safe is Worthing? Crime in context

ONS figures show police recorded 79.5 crimes per 1,000 residents in Worthing in the year to June 2026, excluding fraud. That is below England and Wales (84.6) but above the Sussex Police area (73.6), and the second highest of West Sussex’s seven districts. Recorded crime only counts offences reported to and recorded by the police, so it is a guide, not a direct measure of safety.

Recorded crime in Worthing rose 1.3% in the year to June 2026, to 9,057 offences, while the Sussex Police area fell 4.0%. Theft, shoplifting and vehicle offences fell, but some categories rose, including robbery (89 to 139), bicycle theft (127 to 160), sexual offences (349 to 390) and residential burglary (148 to 151). With small numbers, one-year changes can reflect recording practice. By type:

Shoplifting looks high partly because rates divide every offence by the number of residents, and the town centre’s shops also serve people who live elsewhere. Residential burglary and vehicle crime are well below the national rate. Police street-level data for September 2025 to August 2026 shows the most recorded crime in the Worthing Central neighbourhood, which includes the town centre’s shops and night-time venues, and the fewest crimes in Goring and Durrington.

Is Worthing a wealthy area?

Worthing sits in the middle on deprivation: in the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 it ranks 185th most deprived of 296 districts, in the less deprived half: less deprived than Crawley (109th), Arun (137th) and Chichester (177th), but more deprived than Adur (192nd), Horsham (279th) and Mid Sussex (286th).

None of its 68 small neighbourhood areas is in England’s most deprived 10% on the overall index; three are in the most deprived 20% (one each in Broadwater, Castle and Central wards) and eleven are in the least deprived 10%, mostly in Goring, Offington and Gaisford.

Getting around: trains, roads and commuting

There are five stations in the borough: Worthing, West Worthing, East Worthing, Durrington-on-Sea and Goring-by-Sea.

Source: National Rail journey planner, sample weekdays in October and November 2026 (May 2026 timetable).

At the 2021 Census, taken during a lockdown, 31.3% of employed residents worked mainly from home.

The council’s Local Plan names the A24 as the main route from the north and says congestion is worst on the A259 coast road and the A27. The A27 Worthing and Lancing improvement scheme was cancelled in 2024.

Traffic fumes put the A27 from Crockhurst Hill to Lyons Way in Worthing’s one Air Quality Management Area. At the homes nearest the worst monitoring site, the council estimated nitrogen dioxide at 41.7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, just over the national objective of 40, down from 71.5 when the area was declared. Every other monitoring site in Adur and Worthing was well below the objective.

Schools

Ofsted lists six mainstream state secondary schools in Worthing. Their latest Ofsted outcomes:

“This is a highly aspirational school where pupils truly thrive. All groups of pupils make exceptional progress from their start points.”
Ofsted, St Oscar Romero Catholic School report, April 2025

Among the 21 mainstream state primary, infant and junior schools, no inspected school has a current grade below Good, or a report-card area below ‘expected standard’. Three academies have not yet been inspected in their current form. Their predecessor schools were judged Inadequate in 2022 (Heene) and Requires Improvement in 2021 (Hawthorns, and Field Place Infant, now Orchards Infant). Springfield Infant School was Outstanding for every key judgement in January 2025, and Downsbrook Primary’s June 2026 report card was ‘strong standard’ in every area.

Worthing College and Northbrook College belong to a college group Ofsted judged Good in February 2025.

Health: the hospital and GPs

Worthing Hospital is rated Requires improvement overall by the Care Quality Commission (September 2026), though Outstanding for being caring.

The borough’s 8 GP practices are all rated Good or Outstanding; two (25%) are Outstanding, against 4.6% of rated practices in England. Five of the eight ratings predate October 2021, but the CQC reviewed all five in July 2023 and saw no evidence to reassess them. In the 2026 GP Patient Survey, the share rating their practice good overall ranged from 68% to 97% (England 77%).

The sea, the Downs and the town

The beach is mainly shingle, with sand at low tide. Of Worthing’s three bathing waters, the Environment Agency rated the central site and Goring Beach Good for 2025, and Worthing Beach House Poor. It also issued 26 short-term pollution risk warnings for the central site and 21 for Beach House in 2025. For Beach House it says:

“Bathing is advised against at this bathing water due to pollution from a variety of contributing sources.”
Environment Agency, bathing water profile, 2026

Worthing Pier opened on 12 April 1862 and is Grade II listed. Storm damage closed it in October 2024; it reopened that December on a temporary steel support, and a permanent repair began in August 2026, planned so that the pier can stay open.

Worthing has no Met Office climate station of its own. The nearest with published 1991–2020 averages is at Shoreham Airport, about 6 km east of Worthing station beside the Adur estuary. There, rain averages 753 mm a year, July’s average high is 20.9°C and January’s average low is 2.4°C. Worthing itself may differ slightly.

About a quarter of the borough (our measurement from official boundary maps) lies inside the South Downs National Park, though the town itself is outside it. That includes Cissbury Ring and Highdown Gardens, a chalk garden on Highdown Hill managed by the council since 1967.

“It's the largest hill fort in Sussex and has a history dating back over 5,000 years.”
National Trust, on Cissbury Ring

On Marine Parade, the Dome opened in 1911 and has been a cinema since 1921; its Grade II* list entry, last amended in 1996, calls it “one of the best five early cinemas to survive in England”.

Parts of the coast are in an Environment Agency flood warning area, and so is a stretch of the Ferring Rife that the agency describes as including Goring and the A259 at Northbrook College. A sea defence scheme of almost £5m, completed in July 2026, is designed to protect seafront and town-centre homes and businesses for the next 10 years, the council says; a 50-year scheme is still to be developed.

Is Worthing building enough new homes?

Worthing is not building enough new homes, by the council’s own figures. Its Local Plan, adopted in March 2023, puts Worthing’s housing need at 14,160 homes from 2020 to 2036, or 885 a year. Because the borough is tightly bounded, with little land available, the plan sets a minimum target of 3,672 homes, about 230 a year. That meets about 26% of the need.

That adds up to 1,168 net additional homes in the five years to March 2025, or about 234 a year by our calculation: close to the plan’s target, and about a quarter of the assessed need.

What is changing in the town centre?

Montague Gardens, a £3.1m public space linking the town centre to the seafront, opened on 5 September 2026. At Union Place, the council said in January 2026 that 216 flats were expected to be finished at the end of 2029/30, with a new public car park planned for summer 2028. The council is collecting residents’ ideas for a town centre and seafront masterplan until 22 November 2026 and hopes to share a draft in spring 2027.

The best areas to live in Worthing

The best areas to live in Worthing, on the official deprivation, income and recorded-crime figures, are Goring, Offington, Gaisford and Durrington. No area leads on every measure.

Goring: three of Worthing’s 11 small areas in England’s least deprived 10% (Indices of Deprivation 2025), and with Durrington the fewest recorded crimes. It has Goring Beach (rated Good for 2025) and St Oscar Romero Catholic School. Parts of Goring’s seafront are in the Environment Agency’s coastal flood warning area.

Offington and Gaisford: four of those 11 small areas are in Offington and two in Gaisford, and ONS’s model-based household income estimate (2022-23) is highest, though with a wide margin of error, for an area covering parts of Offington, Gaisford and Broadwater.

Durrington: with Goring, the fewest recorded crimes of Worthing’s 13 police neighbourhoods (September 2025 to August 2026); these are counts, and Durrington has the smallest population of the town’s wards. Deprivation varies a lot within the ward, so look street by street.

For families: Northbrook has the youngest population, with 25.3% of residents under 16 at the 2021 Census, the highest of any ward (Heene 11.7%). It also has the fewest flats (9.3% of homes).

Ward by ward: prices partly follow the housing mix. Offington, where 89.4% of households own their home and 11.0% live in flats, had the highest median price paid; Heene, where 82.6% live in flats, the lowest.

Prices: our calculation of the median price paid, from HM Land Registry data, standard sales, July 2025 to June 2026 (73 to 148 sales per ward; not adjusted for the type of home). Homes and ages: ONS Census 2021.

By postcode, BN11 covers the town centre and seafront; BN12 Goring and Ferring; BN13 Durrington, Salvington and High Salvington, with part of Tarring; and BN14 Broadwater, Offington and Findon Valley, plus Findon village.

Moving to Worthing: parking and permits

Worthing has Controlled Parking Zones, from Zone A in the town centre to Zones D to N further out. At the council’s prices from 1 October 2026, a first resident permit costs £68 a year in Zones A to C and £40 in D to N. There may be a waiting list in some zones, and if you move into a new development you may not be able to get resident or visitor permits. You need a solicitor’s letter or tenancy agreement plus a V5C at your new address.

To keep kerb space free for a removal van, apply for a parking bay suspension at least 5 working days ahead: £45 per 10-metre bay, plus £10 a day for each pay-and-display bay inside a zone. Our Worthing removals page explains how we plan access and bays for a move.