What's the worst place you've ever been in the UK?

[In2mindsss]

Ill go first.

Morecambe. Nice views but proper creepy.

Exeter seems to have quite a good reputation, and it doesn't deserve it in my view. It's largely ugly and the traffic is awful, for starters.

Another Dungeness fan here! We went there on the miniature railway and thought it was stunning (the pub’s v average though).

I’ve been lucky enough to work in lots of the places on this list – stoke, derby, Mansfield - and they all have their plus points. Stoke, like Bradford, has some beautiful Victorian architecture. And Derby has a river running past the cathedral and some lovely Georgian buildings.

Amazed no one has mentioned Coventry - the city centre is awful, for obvious reasons, but it’s like they’ve given up. The remnants of buildings that survived the blitz just make you feel sad – the way they built a horrible concrete ring road on top of them!

Blackburn is grim - I used to live there.

And I can’t warm to Liverpool. Despite all the money flung at it, so much of it still looks derelict, it’s got terrible crime problems and the best thing about the sludgy beaches is the view of wales.

@Blueeyedmale I'm also live just outside Portsmouth but work there. I don't think the Mile End flats and the Buckland high rises help paint a nice picture when you're entering off the M275. Commercial Road was always meant to be regenerated but it never happened. It's such a shame as it could thrive again.

However, I must say I love Portsmouth even with the crappy bits. Nothing beats a night out in Pompey.

My vote goes to Croydon. That place is a dump.

Burnley. Never felt so unsafe

Agree with Blackpool sadly. Had many happy holidays there with my Nan and Grandad in the late 80s to mid-90s but apart from the seafront it really is bleak nowadays.

Ilkeston
Cotmanhay

Horrible places, full of chavs and violence, the residents are acting like it's 'getting worse' whilst forgetting that it's always been like that just social media wasn't as popular back then so people could pretend easier that they didn't live in a cesspit

Yes I wonder.

Doncaster is also grim!

north fife; Newport on Tay and Tayport are lovely

We must have missed the old town as we found some charity shops and cafes and went disappointedly via Mordor to Loch Lomond.

I live in a place that people only drive through to get to somewhere else, so not expecting it to come up 😁

All of Northamptonshire. What’s the point of it? Just one boring place bleeding into another and no shoe manufacturing any more. Crap

My offering is Ashington. Run down and full of belligerent men. I've passed through with DS1 a few times over the years and every single time someone has been spectacularly rude to us. He visited by himself, a few weeks ago, in search of charity shops, and said he's never going again.

I LOVE Morecambe (beautiful landscape, great ice cream, we had a hilarious rough night out there too) but do agree that it would be a good place to set a ghost story. There is something about the way the light falls across the bay, the expanse of mud flats and how far the sea goes out which makes it feel haunted.

I'm also a fan of Blackpool. If youd asked my younger siblings 20 years ago, or you asked my kids now, where they want to go for a day trip, the answer is Blackpool. Some great teen/preteen attractions. It is spectacularly deprived though, often top of various unsavoury stats lists. So it's not just another deprived town but THE deprived town.

Bradford has some things going for it -- great architecture and food. But when we went recently for tea I noticed afresh how astonishingly poor it is. Again, not just a bit deprived. Roads full of large houses run as HMOs and bedsits.

I'm not keen on York -- always feel I should like it more than I do as I love history. I just feel underwhelmed. And as a church enthusiast, ive never really liked the Minster.

There's a nice cafe down by the harbour in Wick and the Heritage Centre is good. It's gone downhill since Wetherspoons closed.

@hholiday We went there on the miniature railway and thought it was stunning (the pub’s v average though) Which pub?

I felt something really off in Bedford when we visited a couple of years ago.

yep definitely up there! 2 of my children were born there, but only ever been there for hospital but now go to East Surrey as I moved and under a docs that’s surrey not croydon based.

Dungeness is one of my favourite places in the UK. It has a poetic bleakness.

Manchester. I moved there from London. People told me northerners are friendlier than southerners. That does not apply to Mancunians i quickly realised!

It's a bit boring and non-descript but I don't think that's enough to get it on a thread about the worst places in the UK - especially considering some of the real dumps that have been mentioned.

Can there be a more damning indictment of a place than ‘it’s gone downhill since the Wetherspoons closed’?

Surprised no one has mentioned parts of Coventry

Westminster figures (and to a degree Blackpool as well ) are skewed by large numbers of commuters / visitors to actual residents

Yes, Westminster crime figures will be inflated by things like pickpocketing and bag dipping among the tourists on the Tube and in areas like Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Oxford Street.

Anyone interested should ask Google 'did Birmingham ever benefit from EU funding?' When you read the answer, the evidence for why Brexit has been described as an act of self-harm will leap out at you with a mournful wail 😔

And more generally:

Loss of Long-Term Stability: EU funds operated on strict 7-year cycles, allowing regions to plan massive, multi-decade infrastructure projects. Domestic replacement funds have faced criticism for shorter timelines, underspending, and bureaucratic delays, hampering long-term community regeneration.
The "Levelling Down" Effect: Research tracking long-term data indicates that while Brexit reduced the raw economic gap between London and poorer regions, it did so by disproportionately suppressing growth in previously prosperous hubs. Economists describe this as "levelling up through levelling down," leaving the entire country poorer overall.