As you get older, proximity to healthcare stops being a nice-to-have and becomes essential. Being close to a GP surgery, having a pharmacy within walking distance, and knowing that care provision in your area is adequate are practical concerns that directly affect day-to-day life.
We scored 233 UK towns on healthcare access per capita — how many GP surgeries and pharmacies are available relative to the local population. This page highlights the towns that score highest, with a bias toward places that are also well-rounded for later-life living overall.
A town with excellent healthcare but no green space, no community facilities and poor transport would not be a great place to retire. So the ranking below prioritises healthcare access but also factors in overall liveability.
5 GP surgeries and 5 pharmacies serving a population of around 2k.
7 GP surgeries and 5 pharmacies serving a population of around 2k.
6 GP surgeries and 8 pharmacies serving a population of around 6k. Median house price: £175k.
1 GP surgeries and 1 pharmacies serving a population of around 1k.
13 GP surgeries and 13 pharmacies serving a population of around 14k. Median house price: £315k.
11 GP surgeries and 11 pharmacies serving a population of around 12k.
8 GP surgeries and 5 pharmacies serving a population of around 8k. Median house price: £455k.
3 GP surgeries and 1 pharmacies serving a population of around 2k. Median house price: £285k.
1 GP surgeries and 1 pharmacies serving a population of around 1k.
1 GP surgeries and 2 pharmacies serving a population of around 2k.
The care access score is built from two data points:
Per-capita scoring is important. A city with 50 GP surgeries sounds impressive, but if it serves 250,000 people, a town with 13 surgeries serving 14,000 people has significantly better provision per resident.
The ranking on this page uses a composite score: 60% care access, 40% overall AgeWell score. This surfaces towns where healthcare is strong and broader quality of life is reasonable — rather than places that happen to have high pharmacy density but little else.
Limitations: This data does not capture NHS waiting times, patient satisfaction, specific GP list sizes, or the quality of individual practices. It measures provision density, not service quality. We recommend using these rankings as a starting point, then checking local NHS resources for more detail.
By per-capita GP and pharmacy provision, Beaumaris in Anglesey currently scores highest in our combined ranking. Pure care score alone is highest in towns like Croydon and Oldham, but those towns score lower on other pillars.
No. The care score measures the density of GP surgeries and pharmacies per capita, not waiting times or service quality. Waiting time data varies significantly by practice and is not consistently available at town level across all UK nations.
A large city may have many GP surgeries in absolute terms, but if each one serves thousands more patients than a surgery in a smaller town, the actual access per person is worse. Per-capita scoring levels the playing field between towns of different sizes.
Transport is particularly important — if you may need frequent hospital or specialist appointments, reliable bus and rail connections matter. Green space and active living facilities also support long-term health and wellbeing. The AgeWell Finder tool lets you weight all five factors to match your own priorities.
Healthcare is just one of five pillars in the AgeWell scoring model. Use the free comparison tool to weight healthcare higher, explore individual town profiles, or compare specific towns side by side.
Try AgeWell Finder