St Albans has once more been named as one of the best places to live in the UK.

Interiors firm Hillarys looked at a range of factors, including average salaries, house prices, crime rates and life expectancy to create their new interactive tool, which rates places as ‘Hot or Not’.

The locations were given a ranking out of 100 for each category, which was then used to calculate an overall percentage of ‘hotness’.

St Albans came fourth with a rating of 97 per cent hot, behind Woking, Surrey (100 per cent), Basingstoke, Hampshire (99 per cent) and Tamworth, Staffordshire (98 per cent).

Tara Hall, spokesperson for www.hillarys.co.uk, said: “As one of the ‘hottest’ rated locations from our research, those living in St Albans have a life expectancy of 84 years, an average salary of £30,200 and can expect to sell their home in around 170 days.

“Whilst homes are definitely on the pricier side in comparison to other areas within the South East (£562,536), the low crime rate (66/1,000) is certainly an extremely appealing factor to those looking to purchase homes in the area.”

Middlesborough was bottom of the list with a hotness rating of just 1 per cent, followed by Leicester (2 per cent) and Canterbury (3 per cent).

Hillarys acquired their data from a range of sources, including the Office for National Statistics.

Tara added: “Every town or city has its merits and its downfalls, but it’s interesting to see how those look when you assign them an actual rating.

“Of course, there are aspects of a city or town that can’t be measured in numbers, like history and culture, and I’m sure that long-term residents of these lower ranking places might disagree with what we’ve found!”

St Albans last featured on a ‘best places to live’ list earlier this year, when it came ninth in the Halifax Quality of Life index.

Hillarys’ ‘Hot or Not’ tool can be found here: https://www.hillarys.co.uk/static/hot-or-not/