CH1 4LF Cheshire West and Chester

Live postcode, introduced January 2018. Ward: Chester City & the Garden Quarter. Region: North West.

Streets

Council tax

What each band costs in Cheshire West and Chester in 2026-27: Band D £2,517 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

ABCDEFGH
£1,678£1,958£2,238£2,517£3,077£3,636£4,196£5,035

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this postcode: most are in band C (40% of about 620 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10; some small counts withheld), for the neighbourhood (census area of about 700 homes) around it, not just this postcode; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, council tax levels 2026-27. Bands are charged as fixed shares of Band D; the actual bill depends on the parish and on discounts such as the single-person discount. Check a home's own band with the official council tax band checker.

Planning and heritage

  • Conservation area: no postcode centre in this postcode is in one.
  • Listed buildings within 100 m of this postcode: none.
  • Article 4 direction (removing permitted development rights): none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Tree preservation orders: none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Green belt: no.

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1.0 km

  • Land to rear of Crane Bank Garage, Chester: up to 7 homes, not permissioned (160 m)
  • Raymond House and Diocesan House, Raymond Street, Chester: up to 27 homes, not permissioned (280 m)
  • New Crane Street car park, Chester: up to 15 homes, not permissioned (440 m)
  • Loves Garage, Garden Lane, Chester: up to 6 homes, not permissioned (490 m)
  • Linenhall car park, Stanley Street, Chester, CH1 2LR: up to 200 homes, permissioned (500 m)
  • Garden Lane car park, Chester: up to 15 homes, not permissioned (550 m)
  • Northgate Redevelopment, Northgate Street, Chester: up to 300 homes, not permissioned (580 m)
  • 22 Nicholas Street, Chester, CH1 2NX: up to 5 homes, not permissioned (650 m)

Source: planning.data.gov.uk (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), compiled from councils and, for listed buildings, Historic England's National Heritage List. Conservation areas, Article 4 directions, tree preservation areas and the green belt are checked at each postcode's centre. Listed buildings and protected trees are counted within 100 m of this postcode. Councils publish Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders and brownfield registers to different standards, and some not yet. Planning applications are not here: there is no national open record of them yet.

Flood risk

Rivers, the sea or surface water: in this postcode, 0 addresses are in areas at high risk, 24 at medium risk and 0 at low risk. Each address counts once, at the higher of its rivers-and-sea and surface-water risk.

Rivers and the sea alone: of the 24 homes the Environment Agency counts, 0 are in areas at high risk, 24 medium, 0 low and 0 very low.

High: 3.3% (1 in 30) or more chance of flooding a year. Medium: 1% to 3.3%. Low: 0.1% to 1%. Very low: under 0.1%. The rivers and sea figures allow for flood defences. Counts cover whole postcodes, which can include other streets.

Flood zone for planning: the postcode centre is in flood zone 3. Zone 3 is a 1% (1 in 100) or greater annual chance of flooding from rivers, or 0.5% from the sea, ignoring defences.

Sources: Environment Agency Flood risk: postcode search tool data (loaded 29 October 2026), Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea: postcodes in areas at risk (loaded 29 October 2026) and Flood Map for Planning (loaded 28 October 2026). Flood zones are checked at each postcode's centre point. These are models of areas, which their publishers say are not suitable for showing whether an individual property is at risk, and they do not cover flooding from sewers or drains. Check an address on the official long-term flood risk service.

Height above sea level

The postcode's addresses are about 2 m above sea level.

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Terrain 50, July 2026: the height of the ground on a 50 m grid, read at each address, in metres above Ordnance Datum (mean sea level at Newlyn). It is the lie of the land, not floor or threshold levels, and is accurate to a few metres. Being low-lying is not in itself a flood risk; the flood section above says what the flood maps show.

Broadband

Superfast 100%, ultrafast 0%, gigabit 0% of premises; 0% cannot get 10 Mbit/s. Ofcom Connected Nations, data as at January 2026.

Getting around

Sources: Department for Transport, NaPTAN (every public transport stop), as at 31 October 2026; Office of Rail and Road, Estimates of station usage 2024–25 (which stations are on the National Rail network, and their journeys: entries and exits in the year to March); OurAirports (public domain, kept by volunteers); car parks and charging points from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and others: not an official register, so some will be missing, private or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre, not routes, and say nothing about how often anything runs. Stations opened since the end of ORR's year appear when ORR publishes the next one, each December; heritage railways are left out.

NearestDistance
Railway stationsChester 5.3 million journeys in 2024–251.6 km
Bache 495,000 journeys in 2024–251.9 km
Capenhurst 206,000 journeys in 2024–258.0 km
Bus stops5 stops within 400 m, 37 within 800 m; nearest Earls Port Chester90 m
Bus or coach stationChester Bus Interchange890 m
Car parks2 within 800 m; nearest Saddlery Way Car Park300 m
EV charging points6 within 1.6 km; nearest Roam EV Charging Station580 m
Airport with scheduled flightsLiverpool John Lennon Airport LPL16.2 km

Local services

Sources: NHS Organisation Data Service, as at 31 October 2026: GP practices, community pharmacies and dental practices with an NHS contract, open now, each placed at the centre of its postcode; hospitals are NHS trust and Welsh health board sites named as hospitals, and may not have an emergency department. Police stations and cash machines from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings: not an official register, so some will be missing or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

NearestDistance
GP surgeries8 practices within 1.6 km; nearest City Walls Medical Centre460 m
Pharmacies6 pharmacies within 1.6 km; nearest Well690 m
NHS dentists9 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Delamere Street Dental Practice690 m
HospitalCountess Of Chester Hospital (Coc NHS Trust)1.8 km
Police stationChester Town Hall Police Station660 m
Cash machines2 machines within 800 m; nearest Tesco Bank ATM600 m

Parks and green space

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Open Greenspace, April 2026: public parks and gardens, play spaces, playing fields and allotments, with their entrances. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre to a site's nearest entrance (or its edge where none is recorded), not walking routes; sizes are the area OS maps for each site. Some sites, such as school playing fields, may not be open to the public.

NearestDistance
Park or garden2 within 800 m; nearest Water Tower Gardens 1.2 ha170 m
Play area5 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 350 m²70 m
Playing field2 within 800 m; nearest The Cop 1.1 ha30 m
Allotments3 within 800 m; nearest Sealand Road Allotments 6,320 m²410 m

Within 800 m: 2 parks and gardens, 1.5 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Spur Wall and Water Tower, a listed building (Grade I), 200 m east. 405 listed buildings are within 1.0 km, 36 of them Grade I and 56 of them Grade II*.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Spur Wall and Water TowerListed building, Grade I200 m east
Bonewaldesthorne TowerListed building, Grade I240 m east
City Wall From Bonewaldesthorne Tower to Pembertons ParlourListed building, Grade I320 m east
Part of City Wall From the Watergate to Bonewaldesthorne TowerListed building, Grade I350 m south-east
The Little Abbey Gateway, Northgate StreetScheduled monument670 m east
The walls, towers, gates and posterns of the City of ChesterScheduled monument720 m south-east
Abbey Green Roman siteScheduled monument760 m east
Overleigh Road CemeteryRegistered park or garden, Grade II1.3 km south
Grosvenor ParkRegistered park or garden, Grade II*1.4 km east
Natural landmarks within 5.0 km
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Gamon's RoughWood900 m south
Gorse HillHill1.7 km west
Gallows HillHill2.1 km east
Donkey FieldWood2.5 km north-east
The DaleValley3.2 km north
Sealion PoolLake or reservoir4.1 km north-east

Sources: Historic England's registers through planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), and Cadw through DataMapWales (Welsh Government): World Heritage Sites within 10.0 km, battlefields within 5.0 km, registered parks and gardens within 3.0 km, scheduled monuments within 2.0 km, and Grade I and II* listed buildings within 1.0 km. Ordnance Survey, OS Open Names, October 2026: named hills, valleys, lakes, woods, wetlands and coast (it has no rivers). Distances are in a straight line to the middle of each site, and being on a register does not mean there is public access.

Air quality

Source: Defra, modelled background air pollution, annual means for 2024, for the 1 km square that holds the postcode's centre. These are background levels, away from the kerb: beside a busy road nitrogen dioxide in particular can be several times higher. UK limits are the legal annual limits for England and Wales; the World Health Organization's 2021 guidelines are much stricter, and most towns and cities are above them.

Annual means in µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre of air)
PollutantHereUK limitWHO guideline
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)8.04010
Fine particles (PM2.5)5.8205
Particles (PM10)9.24015

All three are within the UK legal limits; PM2.5 is above the WHO guideline, as in most towns and cities.

Road and rail noise

Source: Defra, strategic noise mapping Round 4 (England), modelled for 2021 and published in December 2023: Lden, the average sound level over a whole day with extra weight for the evening and night, on a 10 m grid, read at each address. These are models of traffic on the roads and railways, not measurements; they leave out aircraft, industry and neighbours, and a room at the back of a house is often much quieter than the front. The World Health Organization's guidelines are 53 dB for road traffic and 54 dB for railways.

Addresses by modelled noise level (Lden, dB)
LevelRoad trafficRailways
65 to 69260
Under 55026

26 of the postcode's 26 addresses are modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic, above the WHO guidelines.

People and work

Source: ONS Census 2021, taken on 21 March 2021, for the Output Area (a small census area of about 125 households) that this postcode is in: 377 residents in 134 households. The census was taken during a lockdown, so working from home is high and travel to work low compared with now. ONS swaps a few records between neighbouring areas and adds small amounts of noise to counts to protect privacy, so small differences mean little. Industry is not published for areas this small.

Who lives here

Around this postcodeEngland
Median age2440
Children under 154%17%
Aged 65 and over7%18%

Homes

Around this postcodeEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)34%61%
Owned outright18%33%
Shared ownershipunder 1%1%
Social rented5%17%
Private rented60%21%

Work and commuting

Around this postcodeEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work50%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)12%6%
Retired (of adults)8%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)under 1%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)25%32%
Travel to work by car or van37%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram1%4%
By any public transport, including bus5%8%
On foot or by bicycle32%10%
Work within 10 km of home (of those who travel to work)78%65%
Work 30 km or more away16%8%

Education and languages

Around this postcodeEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)36%34%
No qualifications4%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification2%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)93%91%
Cannot speak English well or at all2%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this postcode is in decile 8 of 10 on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, where 1 is the most deprived tenth of England's 33,755 neighbourhoods and 10 the least.

Source: English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), by LSOA (about 1,500 people), through the ONS Postcode Directory. The index combines income, employment, health, education, crime, housing and living environment; it ranks areas against each other and does not describe any one household. Ranks in England and Wales are worked out separately and cannot be compared.

The full dossier for this postcode's main street is on Sealand Road.