MK17 8DR Central Bedfordshire

Live postcode, introduced January 1980. Ward: Aspley & Woburn. Region: East of England.

Streets

Council tax

What each band costs in Central Bedfordshire in 2026-27: Band D £2,516 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

ABCDEFGH
£1,677£1,957£2,237£2,516£3,075£3,634£4,194£5,032

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this postcode: most are in band G (27% of about 600 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10), 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: yes, Aspley Guise Conservation Area. Extensions, demolition, some windows and doors, and work on trees need consent.
  • Listed buildings within 100 m of this postcode: 1.
  • 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: yes, Central Bedfordshire.

Listed buildings

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

No address in this postcode is in an area at high, medium or low risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water. The rest are in areas at very low risk: less than a 0.1% (1 in 1,000) chance a year.

Rivers and the sea alone: no home is in an area at risk.

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: no postcode centre is in flood zone 2 or 3.

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 112 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 100%, gigabit 100% 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 stationsAspley Guise 8,300 journeys in 2024–251.1 km
Woburn Sands 48,000 journeys in 2024–251.6 km
Ridgmont 18,000 journeys in 2024–253.1 km
Bus stops3 stops within 400 m, 6 within 800 m; nearest Duke Street Aspley Guise140 m
Bus or coach stationMilton Keynes Coachway Brook Furlong6.6 km
Car parksCar Park on Woburn Sands Road, MK172.7 km
EV charging points1 within 1.6 km; nearest bp pulse Charging Station910 m
Airport with scheduled flightsLondon Luton Airport LTN23.7 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 surgeries1 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Asplands Medical Centre1.1 km
Pharmacies1 pharmacies within 1.6 km; nearest Woburn Sands Pharmacy1.0 km
NHS dentists1 practices within 1.6 km; nearest Dental Surgery1.2 km
HospitalMilton Keynes Hospital7.2 km
Police stationThames Valley Police9.2 km

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 garden1 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 8,420 m²780 m
Play area1 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 1,890 m²330 m
Playing field1 within 800 m; nearest Unnamed 3.3 ha240 m
AllotmentsWoburn Sands Allotments 4.6 ha1.4 km

Within 800 m: 1 park or garden, 0.8 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Guise House, a listed building (Grade II*), 550 m north-east. 34 listed buildings are within 1.0 km, 4 of them Grade II*.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Guise HouseListed building, Grade II*550 m north-east
Aspley HouseListed building, Grade II*620 m north-east
Church of St BotolphListed building, Grade II*660 m north-east
The Old HouseListed building, Grade II*730 m north-east
Danesborough Camp: a slight univallate hillfort 420m north of The KnollScheduled monument2.0 km south-west
Wavendon House landscapeRegistered park or garden, Grade II2.5 km north-west
Natural landmarks within 5.0 km
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Ling HillHill620 m south-west
The WarrenWood720 m north-west
Mermaid's PondLake or reservoir950 m south
Wensdon HillHill1.1 km north-east
Aspley WoodWood1.2 km south
Carter's GroveWood1.5 km south-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)7.54010
Fine particles (PM2.5)7.0205
Particles (PM10)11.54015

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, and its airport maps of the same round for the fifteen largest English airports, published in April 2026: 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, not measurements; they leave out smaller airports and airfields, 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, 54 dB for railways and 45 dB for aircraft (below the lowest level shown here).

Noise figures are still being loaded.

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: 266 residents in 118 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 age5240
Children under 1513%17%
Aged 65 and over25%18%

Homes

Around this postcodeEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)95%61%
Owned outright53%33%
Shared ownership0%1%
Social rented0%17%
Private rented5%21%

Work and commuting

Around this postcodeEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work60%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)3%6%
Retired (of adults)30%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)0%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)56%32%
Travel to work by car or van38%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tramunder 1%4%
By any public transport, including busunder 1%8%
On foot or by bicycle5%10%
Work within 10 km of home (of those who travel to work)47%65%
Work 30 km or more away18%8%

Education and languages

Around this postcodeEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)58%34%
No qualifications5%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification5%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)99%91%
Cannot speak English well or at all0%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this postcode is in decile 10 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 West Hill.