Francis Close Hitchin, North Hertfordshire

House sales on this street

Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, sales registered up to 28 August 2026, loaded 28 October 2026. Sales reach the register two weeks to two months after completion, so the last two months are incomplete. Matched by postcode and street name.

House prices and rents in North Hertfordshire

A typical home in North Hertfordshire cost £422,835 in August 2026, 3.1% more than a year before. That is 12% more than five years earlier and 23% more than ten years earlier.

Private renters in North Hertfordshire paid £1,445 a month on average in September 2026, 6.4% more than a year before. That is 38% more than five years earlier.

Sources: UK House Price Index (HM Land Registry, with the ONS and the Welsh Government), to August 2026; ONS Price Index of Private Rents, to September 2026. Figures for the whole council area, not this street. The typical price is adjusted for the mix of homes that sold, so it is not the value of any one home; the street's own sales are above. Rents are the average paid on all private tenancies, new and existing, so they move more slowly than rents being advertised.

Energy performance certificates

Source: Energy Performance of Buildings Register (MHCLG), register as at 1 November 2026. Latest certificate per address; certificates last ten years, so the oldest here dates from July 2009 and some homes have none. Address data © Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, shown for understanding the energy efficiency of buildings only.

25 homes with a current certificate; median floor area 75 m². Most common: Flat (12); House, end-terrace (7); House, mid-terrace (6). Built: 1967-1975 (13); 1950-1966 (8); 1976-1982 (2). Tenure at assessment: owner-occupied (18); rented (private) (5).

Gas and electricity use

Homes with gas used 7,665 kWh of it on average in 2024, 41% less than the district's 12,890 kWh, and 4,156 kWh of electricity, 5% more than the district's 3,957 kWh. There are gas meters for about 62% of the homes.

These are all the homes on the postcode, whatever their size and however many live in them, so they show the kind of homes and heating here rather than what any one home uses. The typical figure is the median: half the homes used less. The district is SG4.

Source: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, postcode level domestic gas and electricity statistics for 2024 (gas from mid-May to mid-May), Open Government Licence: domestic meters on each postcode, from the gas and electricity industry's meter readings. A postcode with fewer than 5 meters of a fuel has no figures for it.

Council tax

What each band costs in North Hertfordshire in 2026-27: Band D £2,449 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this street: most are in band G (31% of about 870 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 street; 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 street's postcodes is in one.
• Listed buildings on or by this street: 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.

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 on or by this street. 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.

Energy projects nearby

1 energy project near the street's postcodes.

Planned projects can change or not go ahead; search the planning authority's applications by the reference shown for the plans, conditions and any objections. Construction brings traffic for some months; once built, solar farms and batteries are usually quiet, while turbines and waste plants can be seen or heard further away.

Source: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q2 2026 extract, Open Government Licence: renewable electricity and storage projects over 150 kW, operating, being built, permitted or applied for. Shown: wind turbines and plants that burn or digest waste within 5 km (3.1 miles), other projects of 1 MW or more within 2 km (1.2 miles); refused, withdrawn and abandoned projects are left out. Distances are from the nearest postcode centre to each project's grid reference.

Roadworks

No street works under way, planned or finished in the last three months on this street, in permits up to 31 October 2026.

Source: Department for Transport, Street Manager open data, permits and works up to 31 October 2026. It is published once a month, so works arranged or started since then are not shown, and dates are the ones planned unless the works have started or finished. Emergency works are often permitted after they begin.

Flood risk

Rivers, the sea or surface water: in this street's postcodes, 7 addresses are in areas at high risk, 9 at medium risk and 10 at low risk. Each address counts once, at the higher of its rivers-and-sea and surface-water risk.

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.

Recorded floods

No recorded flood covers the centre of this street's postcodes.

Recorded floods are where floodwater was seen or surveyed after a flood. Many floods were never mapped, an outline over a postcode's centre does not mean every home in it flooded, and homes outside one may have. Ask the seller whether the home itself has flooded.

Sources: Environment Agency Recorded Flood Outlines; 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.

© Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2026. All rights reserved. Some features are based on digital spatial data from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, © NERC (CEH); the postcode data is produced in part from PAF® and Multiple Residence Data, © Royal Mail Group Limited.

Coastal erosion

No projected coastal erosion zone is within 1 km (0.6 miles) of the street's postcodes.

Sources: Environment Agency, National Coastal Erosion Risk Mapping 2024 (England), and Natural Resources Wales, National Coastal Erosion Risk Management (Wales), Open Government Licence. Distances are from the nearest postcode centre to the edge of each zone; where a postcode centre is inside a zone, some homes on it may not be.

Storm overflows

1 storm overflow within 1 km (0.6 miles) of the street's postcodes spilled 2 times, for 3 hours in all, in 2025. They discharge into Purwell.

A storm overflow lets sewage diluted with rainwater into a river, stream or the sea when heavy rain overwhelms the sewers, so the spills here affect the water they run into, not homes. A spill is counted the regulators' way: a first 12 hours, then each 24 hours it goes on.

Source: Environment Agency, Event Duration Monitoring storm overflow annual return for 2025, from the water companies' monitors on each overflow in England, Open Government Licence. Distances are from the nearest postcode centre to each overflow's outlet. A year's figures are published the following spring; a monitor that worked for less of the year undercounts.

Coal mining

No postcode centre here is in a coalfield: the Mining Remediation Authority records no coal mining risk here.

Source: Mining Remediation Authority (formerly the Coal Authority), development high and low risk areas, Open Government Licence. Checked at each postcode's centre, so a home near the edge of an area may differ. It covers coal mining only, not other mining (such as tin, lead, iron or chalk), and is no substitute for a coal mining search. About the risk areas.

Radon

The postcode is in a 1 km square with radon potential up to 1 to 3%: up to that share of homes there is estimated to be at or above the Action Level of 200 becquerels per cubic metre. At least part of the square is a radon Affected Area, where 1% or more of homes are.

Radon is a natural radioactive gas from the ground that can build up indoors; long exposure raises the risk of lung cancer. A three-month test with two small detectors is the only way to know a home's level, and a high level can usually be brought down with a sump or better ventilation. UKHSA sells a radon report for a single address from its detailed map at ukradon.org.

Source: British Geological Survey and UK Health Security Agency, Indicative Atlas of Radon in Great Britain, Open Government Licence. Contains British Geological Survey materials © UKRI 2026. Each 1 km square is classed by the highest radon potential found anywhere in it, so a square's figure can overstate it for much of the square; the detailed map is not open data.

Historic landfill

1 historic landfill site is within 500 m (0.3 miles) of the street's postcodes, the nearest 350 m away.

Closed tips can give off gas (methane and carbon dioxide) and leak into the ground for years. An environmental search, which conveyancers usually order, looks at landfill and contaminated land around the home; the council keeps a register of land it has found to be contaminated.

Sources: Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales, historic landfill sites (places where waste was put into or onto the land and no environmental permit is now in force), Open Government Licence. Distances are from the nearest postcode centre to the edge of each site as mapped; the outlines and dates come from old records and can be approximate. Landfill still operating is not included.

Height above sea level

The street's addresses are about 72 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

Source: Ofcom Connected Nations, data as at January 2026. Percentages are of premises in each postcode that can get the service, not take-up or speed achieved.

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 middle of the street, 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.

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. Ratings and care homes: Care Quality Commission, latest ratings as at 2 November 2026 (England only; the CQC does not rate dental practices, and Wales's inspectorates give no ratings). 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 middle of the street. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

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 middle of the street 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.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is North Eastern Block of Buildings at the British Schools, a listed building (Grade II*), 860 m (0.5 miles) north-west. 29 listed buildings are within 1 km (0.6 miles), 1 of them Grade I and 2 of them Grade II*.

Sources: Historic England's registers through planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), and Cadw through DataMapWales (Welsh Government): World Heritage Sites within 10 km (6.2 miles), battlefields within 5 km (3.1 miles), registered parks and gardens within 3 km (1.9 miles), scheduled monuments within 2 km (1.2 miles), and Grade I and II* listed buildings within 1 km (0.6 miles). 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 middle of the street. 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.

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).

29 of the street's 37 addresses are modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic, above the WHO guidelines.

Climate, daylight and earthquakes

Monthly temperatures and rainfall, sunrise and sunset through the year, and earthquakes recorded nearby since 1970 are much the same across the area, so they are worked out once for North Hertfordshire: see them on the North Hertfordshire page.

Nearest schools

Source: Get Information About Schools (Department for Education), 5 November 2026; Ofsted monthly management information as at September 2026. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street to the school; catchments and admissions are not shown. Since November 2025 Ofsted gives report-card grades by area, not one overall grade; older grades stand until a school is re-inspected.

Exam results are from the Department for Education's school performance tables (Explore Education Statistics, Open Government Licence), for all pupils at each school. The middle school in England had 63% at the expected standard at the end of primary school (2025), Attainment 8 of 46.0 at GCSE (2026) and an A level average of C+ (2025). Attainment 8 adds up a pupil's grades in eight GCSEs, with English and maths counted twice (90 is the most), averaged over the school's pupils. Progress 8 compares pupils with others who had the same results at the end of primary school; it is not published for GCSEs in 2025 and 2026, as those pupils sat no primary tests during the pandemic. Small year groups swing from year to year, and figures for very small ones are withheld.

Nurseries and childcare

The ten nearest nurseries, pre-schools and clubs are all within 1.2 km (0.7 miles); the nearest is 370 m from the middle of the street.

Ofsted also registers 841 childminders and 251 home childcarers (nannies) in Hertfordshire. It does not publish their addresses, so they cannot be shown here; the council's family information service lists those taking children.

Source: Ofsted, childcare providers and inspections management information, as at June 2026, Open Government Licence: providers on the Early Years and Childcare Registers on non-domestic premises, placed at their postcode. Since November 2025 Ofsted gives a standard for each of six areas (Exceptional, Strong, Expected, Needs attention, Urgent improvement) rather than one overall grade; older grades stand until a provider is inspected again. Distances are straight lines from the middle of the street.

Food hygiene ratings nearby

Source: Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, extract of 5 November 2026. Each rating is shown with the date it was given; a business may have been re-inspected since the extract. Within 500 m (0.3 miles) of the middle of the street.

Crime within 250 m

Source: data.police.uk street-level crime, September 2025 to August 2026. Police forces move every crime to the nearest of about 760,000 anonymised map points before publishing, so these are crimes near this street, not on it, and a busy point can collect crimes from a wider area. Counts are of records, not convictions.

Most of these are attached to: On or near Petrol Station (73); On or near Traherne Close (14); On or near Sunnyside Road (7); On or near Folly Close (5); On or near Conquest Close (2).

Road safety

Source: Department for Transport, road safety data (STATS19), collisions in 2021 to 2025, as published by November 2026. Collisions in which someone was hurt and which were reported to the police, within 150 m of the middle of any of this street's postcodes, or of the street. Severity is the worst injury as the police recorded it.

4 collisions in which someone was hurt were reported on and around the street in 2021 to 2025: 0 fatal, 1 serious and 3 slight, in which 1 person was seriously hurt. 1 involved a pedestrian. Most were on roads with a 30 mph limit.

Only collisions in which someone was hurt and which the police were told about are here: damage-only collisions and near misses are not, and some injuries are never reported. Positions are recorded by the police, usually to within a few metres. Each year's figures are published the following September.

Traffic on nearby roads

The busiest counted road within 500 m (0.3 miles) is the A602 between B656 and Whitehill Rd, with 34,044 motor vehicles a day on average in 2025, 190 m from the street's postcodes.

Each figure is the annual average daily flow: the motor vehicles passing the count point, both ways, on an average day of the year. A point is counted by hand on a weekday every few years and estimated from the trend on similar roads in between. Lorries are heavy goods vehicles, as a share of all motor vehicles.

Source: Department for Transport, road traffic statistics, annual average daily flows to 2025, Open Government Licence. Distances are from the nearest postcode centre to each count point.

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 street's postcodes are in: 434 residents in 197 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

Homes

Work and commuting

Education and languages

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this street 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.

What has changed

Nothing new since the change feed started on 30 October 2026. New sales and energy certificates, and hygiene ratings, school inspections and flood figures nearby, will be listed here as the sources update.

Everything that has changed on and near this street

Postcodes on this street

Source: ONS Postcode Directory August 2026, ONS UPRN Directory September 2026, OS Open Linked Identifiers September 2026. A postcode can cover more than one street; the share shows how many of its addresses are on this one.

• SG4 9EJ: 37 addresses

Nearby streets

Foster Drive · Morrello Gardens · Matthew Gate · Folly Close · Mowbray Gardens · Blackhorse Close · Langbridge Close · Alpine Close · The Paddock · Conquest Close · Sunnyside Road · Grange Close

All the streets in SG4 and across North Hertfordshire.