‘Up-and-come’ St Leonards Makes Sunday Times Best List
St Leonards was named among the top ten places to live in the southeast of England in a Sunday Times feature Best Places to Live 2026 published last weekend. The guide is sponsored by mortgage lender Lloyds Banking Group with the aim of supporting home buyers.
The newspaper’s editorial project editor Helen Davies claimed that an expert team of judges had visited every location on the list and “talked to the locals”. In this way they assessed the quality of schools, transport, broadband speeds and mobile signals, access to high-quality green spaces and “the health of the high street”. They were looking for “thriving locations with a strong sense of community rather than famous names with high house prices”.
The verdict: “Shabby enough to be jolly and chic enough to turn heads, St Lens isn’t just the acceptable face of Hastings, it’s the acceptable face of seaside gentrification. Thanks to eye-catching architecture and quietly fashionable wine bars, restaurants, boutiques and interior shops, and in the Kino-Teatr, a super-cool cinema and gallery arts centre, it has managed to up-and-come without losing its seaside soul.”
Top of the southeast list was Lindfield in West Sussex.
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