Purcell Way Shefford, Central Bedfordshire

27 addresses across 2 postcodes (SG17), about 250 m long, classed as a local road. USRN 25200787.

  • Sales: 48 recorded sales since 1995; in 2023 the median was £540,000 across 2 sales.
  • Energy: 15 homes have an energy certificate (C: 2, D: 13).
  • Flood: 3 addresses on its postcodes are in areas at high or medium risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water.
  • Council tax: Most homes around it are in council tax band C; Band D in Central Bedfordshire costs £2,516 a year in 2026-27.
  • Broadband: Gigabit broadband is available to 100% of premises.
  • Transport: The nearest railway station is Arlesey, about 4.2 km (2.6 miles) away in a straight line.
  • Green space: The nearest park or garden, Bellcote Meadow, is about 180 m away.
  • Air: Background air pollution in 2024 was 6.6 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 7.0 of PM2.5, within UK legal limits.
  • Height: Its addresses are 37 to 41 m above sea level.
  • Noise: 1 of its 27 addresses is modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic.
  • Doctors: The nearest GP surgery is Shefford Health Centre, about 370 m away.
  • People: About 610 people lived in the census areas around it in 2021; 90% of households owned their home and 36% of adults held a degree or other higher qualification.
  • Crime: 66 crimes were recorded within 250 m between September 2025 and August 2026, most often violence and sexual offences.

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.

Sales by year (standard sales only; repossessions and buy-to-let transfers excluded)
YearSalesMedian priceLowestHighest
20232£540,000£455,000£625,000
20221£415,000£415,000£415,000
20211£535,000£535,000£535,000
20202£401,750£387,000£416,500
20181£425,000£425,000£425,000
20171£479,000£479,000£479,000
20161£470,000£470,000£470,000
20153£344,000£330,000£390,000
20132£311,250£250,000£372,500
20124£304,250£262,500£315,000
20101£263,500£263,500£263,500
20092£302,500£280,000£325,000
Most recent sales (48)
DateAddressTypePriceNotes
5 Sep 202325 SG17 5RYDetached£455,000
25 Jan 202327 SG17 5RYDetached£625,000
11 May 202222 SG17 5RYDetached£415,000
25 Mar 202124 SG17 5RYDetached£535,000
29 Sep 202012 SG17 5RYDetached£387,000
27 Apr 202023 SG17 5RYDetached£416,500
12 Apr 201825 SG17 5RYDetached£425,000
27 Nov 20174 SG17 5RYDetached£479,000
21 Jun 201624 SG17 5RYDetached£470,000
30 Nov 20152 SG17 5RYDetached£390,000
4 Sep 201511 SG17 5RYDetached£330,000
25 Jun 201511 SG17 5RYDetached£288,000Not a standard sale (repossession, buy-to-let or transfer).
13 Mar 201520 SG17 5RYDetached£344,000
13 Nov 201315 SG17 5RYDetached£250,000
8 Mar 20138 SG17 5RYDetached£372,500
21 Sep 201221 SG17 5RYDetached£306,000
23 Apr 201225 SG17 5RYDetached£302,500
5 Apr 201227 SG17 5RYDetached£315,000
23 Jan 20127 SG17 5RYDetached£262,500
18 Mar 201023 SG17 5RYDetached£263,500
30 Nov 20094 SG17 5RYDetached£280,000
13 Feb 20098 SG17 5RYDetached£325,000
21 Mar 20079 SG17 5RYDetached£279,950
26 Jan 20079 SG17 5RYDetached£270,000
17 Nov 200629 SG17 5RYDetached£285,000
30 Aug 200614 SG17 5RYDetached£271,000
28 Nov 200515 SG17 5RYDetached£232,000
9 Sep 200529 SG17 5RYDetached£250,000
12 Aug 200519 SG17 5RYDetached£250,000
12 Jul 200514 SG17 5RYDetached£250,000
21 May 200323 SG17 5RYDetached£237,500
3 Feb 200327 SG17 5RYDetached£278,000
5 Jul 200214 SG17 5RYDetached£192,000
14 Jun 20029 SG17 5RYDetached£218,000
31 May 20027 SG17 5RYDetached£208,839New build.
3 Dec 200119 SG17 5RYDetached£203,000
16 Nov 200125 SG17 5RYDetached£189,000
29 Jun 200135 SG17 5RYDetached£203,000
2 Nov 199910 SG17 5RYDetached£129,995
23 Jul 199929 SG17 5RYDetached£139,000
25 Jun 199917 SG17 5RYDetached£125,950
23 Apr 199920 SG17 5RYDetached£132,000
2 Feb 199829 SG17 5RYDetached£131,950
29 Jan 199820 SG17 5RYDetached£117,000
12 Sep 199719 SG17 5RYDetached£115,000
25 Jul 199710 SG17 5RYDetached£110,000
10 Oct 199614 SG17 5RYDetached£98,000
27 Oct 199533 SG17 5RYDetached£105,000

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.

15 homes with a current certificate; median floor area 121 m². Most common: House, detached (14); Bungalow, detached (1). Built: 1991-1995 (11); 1996-2002 (2); 1983-1990 (2). Tenure at assessment: owner-occupied (11); rented (private) (1).

Each home's certificates and sales (9 addresses)

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 street: most are in band C (27% of about 700 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: 2.
  • 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.

Listed buildings

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1 km (0.6 miles)

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.

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, 0 addresses are in areas at high risk, 3 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 on this street is in flood zone 2 or 3.

PostcodePlanning zoneAddresses at high / medium / low riskGroundwater
SG17 5RYnot in 2 or 3 0 / 0 / 7 unlikely
SG17 5ANnot in 2 or 3 0 / 3 / 3 unlikely

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.

© 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.

Height above sea level

The street's 27 addresses are between 37 m and 41 m above sea level (38 m on average).

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.

Availability by postcode (% of premises)
PostcodeSuperfast (30 Mbit/s+)Ultrafast (300 Mbit/s+)GigabitBelow 10 Mbit/s
SG17 5AN100%100%100%0%
SG17 5RY100%100%100%0%

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.

NearestDistance
Railway stationsArlesey 688,000 journeys in 2024–254.2 km (2.6 miles)
Biggleswade 895,000 journeys in 2024–256.8 km (4.2 miles)
Letchworth Garden City 1.8 million journeys in 2024–259.1 km (5.7 miles)
Bus stops6 stops within 400 m (0.2 miles), 19 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Purcell Way Shefford70 m
Bus or coach stationInterchange Biggleswade6.7 km (4.2 miles)
EV charging points2 within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest bp pulse Charging Station290 m
Airport with scheduled flightsLondon Luton Airport LTN18.4 km (11 miles)

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 middle of the street. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

NearestDistance
GP surgeries1 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Shefford Health Centre370 m
Pharmacies2 pharmacies within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Shefford Pharmacy370 m
NHS dentists2 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Shefford Dental Clinic310 m
HospitalBiggleswade Hospital Spring House8.3 km (5.1 miles)
Police stationBiggleswade Police Station6.8 km (4.2 miles)

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.

NearestDistance
Park or garden1 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Bellcote Meadow 3.8 ha180 m
Play area7 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 140 m²200 m
Playing field1 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 2.7 ha260 m
Allotments1 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 4,690 m²380 m

Within 800 m (0.5 miles): 1 park or garden, 3.8 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Catholic Church of St Francis of Assisi, a listed building (Grade II*), 790 m (0.5 miles) west. 31 listed buildings are within 1 km (0.6 miles), 1 of them Grade II*.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the middle of the street
Catholic Church of St Francis of AssisiListed building, Grade II*790 m (0.5 miles) west
Chicksands PrioryRegistered park or garden, Grade II2.8 km (1.7 miles) west
Natural landmarks within 5 km (3.1 miles)
NameWhat it isFrom the middle of the street
Bury SpinneyWood1 km (0.6 miles) north
Hitchin HillHill1 km (0.6 miles) south-east
Cockshoothill GroveWood1.2 km (0.7 miles) north-west
Cockshoot HillHill1.2 km (0.7 miles) north-west
Collin's GroveWood1.3 km (0.8 miles) north-west
Bilberry PondLake or reservoir1.9 km (1.2 miles) east

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.

Annual means in µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre of air)
PollutantHereUK limitWHO guideline
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)6.64010
Fine particles (PM2.5)7.0205
Particles (PM10)12.14015

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).

Addresses by modelled noise level (Lden, dB)
LevelRoad trafficRailways
55 to 5910
Under 552627

1 of the street's 27 addresses is 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 Central Bedfordshire: see them on the Central Bedfordshire page.

Nearest schools

Source: Get Information About Schools (Department for Education), 3 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.

SchoolPhaseAgesDistanceInspection
Samuel Whitbread AcademySecondary13–18410 m (0.3 miles) No published inspection
Robert Bloomfield AcademyMiddle deemed secondary9–131.2 km (0.8 miles) No overall grade (Feb 2025, graded inspection without an overall judgement): Quality of education: Outstanding; Behaviour and attitudes: Outstanding; Personal development: Outstanding; Leadership and management: Outstanding
Shefford Lower SchoolPrimary3–91.3 km (0.8 miles) No published inspection
Clifton All Saints Academy Church of EnglandPrimary2–111.5 km (0.9 miles) Good (Dec 2022, overall grade under the previous framework)

Food hygiene ratings nearby

Source: Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, extract of 3 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.

BusinessTypeDistanceRatingRated
Hong Kong House SG17 5ANTakeaway/sandwich shop70 m5 Very good7 Aug 2025
Samuel Whitbread Academy SG17 5QSSchool/college/university380 m5 Very good4 Apr 2025
Best Nursery (Shefford) SG17 5QSHospitals/Childcare/Caring Premises440 m (0.3 miles)5 Very good8 May 2025

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.

66 recorded crimes by category
CategoryCrimes
Violence and sexual offences25
Anti-social behaviour17
Public order7
Criminal damage and arson5
Other crime3
Other theft3
Drugs3
Possession of weapons1
Burglary1
Vehicle crime1

Most of these are attached to: On or near Pinemead (11); On or near Olivers Court (10); On or near Peartree Close (10); On or near Southfields (9); On or near Hyde Close (8).

People and work

Source: ONS Census 2021, taken on 21 March 2021, for the 2 Output Areas (small census areas of about 125 households each) that this street's postcodes are in: 614 residents in 250 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 streetEngland
Median age4940
Children under 1515%17%
Aged 65 and over21%18%

Homes

Around this streetEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)90%61%
Owned outright49%33%
Shared ownershipunder 1%1%
Social rented0%17%
Private rented9%21%

Work and commuting

Around this streetEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work65%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)4%6%
Retired (of adults)25%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)0%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)35%32%
Travel to work by car or van58%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram2%4%
By any public transport, including bus2%8%
On foot or by bicycle5%10%
Work within 10 km (6 miles) of home (of those who travel to work)32%65%
Work 30 km (19 miles) or more away16%8%

Education and languages

Around this streetEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)36%34%
No qualifications15%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification6%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)99%91%
Cannot speak English well or at allunder 1%2%

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.

  • SG17 5RY: 26 addresses of 29 in the postcode
  • SG17 5AN: 1 address of 52 in the postcode

Nearby streets

Elgar Drive · Walton Close · Beacon Close · Clifton Road · Tippett Drive · Cedar Close · Bury Road · Britten Road · Pinemead · Bury Road · Southfields · Olivers Court

All the streets in SG17 and across Central Bedfordshire.

What this page cannot tell you

  • Whether a particular house is at risk of flooding, subsiding or anything else: the flood map is a model of areas and there is no property-level data here.
  • What a home is worth now: sales are historic prices for the homes that happened to sell.
  • How safe the street is: crime points are moved to anonymised locations and many crimes are never reported.
  • Whether you would get a place at a school: distances are straight lines, not catchments.
  • Who lives on the street now: census figures describe the small areas around it in March 2021, during a lockdown.
  • How long a journey takes or how often anything runs: transport distances are straight lines to the nearest stops.
  • Whether a GP practice is taking new patients, or a dentist new NHS patients.
  • How loud a home is inside, or noise from industry, neighbours or smaller airfields: noise figures are models of road, rail and air traffic outside.

How each figure on this page is matched to the street and worked out: methodology.