Harrogate places as one of the greenest towns in Yorkshire, study reveals

Harrogate has placed fourth on a list of the greenest towns in Yorkshire.

The study revealed that Scarborough is the greenest town in Yorkshire with residents benefitting from fantastic air quality, a large forested area and a very generous average garden size.

The only area the town didn’t score highly for was access to public green space which it ranked worst for out of all locations analysed.

Elsewhere in Yorkshire, Barnsley ranked best for access to public green space with residents only 280m from their nearest park or playing field on average.

Hull ranked worst for air quality with residents facing almost twice as much CO2 per square kilometre than residents of Leeds and 23 times as much as residents of Scarborough.

Hull also scored lowest for average garden size while Wakefield only narrowly missed the title of the best location for those searching for a property with a large garden.

In terms of tree cover, Sheffield scored incredibly highly whilst Huddersfield had the lowest forested area out of all of the Local Authority Districts analysed.

The list is as follows:

1 Scarborough; 2 Barnsley; 3 Halifax; 4 Harrogate; 5 Rotherham; 6 Huddersfield; 7 Wakefield; 8 Sheffield; 9 Doncaster; 10 Selby; 11 York; 12 Leeds; 13 Bradford 14 Kingston-Upon-Hull.

To find Yorkshire's Greenest City, Exubia worked through ONS Local Authority District Data on different topics, including the average garden size in m2, the average distance to a local park/playing field in metres, forest cover as a % of total land area and the average kilotons (kt) of CO2 per km2.

A spokesperson for Biophilic Design Agency Exubia, James Mayo, said: “We chose these factors as they are the most representative of what most people think of when they think of a ‘green’ town or city.

“In total, we analysed 14 locations. For each factor, we ranked the cities from first to 14th, combining the total ranking of the cities across all factors to devise our list.”

The Data

Scarborough: average CO2 per km2: 0.6kt, total area covered by forest: 14.32%, average garden size: 322.6m2, average distance to park/playing field: 549.94m.

Barnsley: average CO2 per km2: 4kt, total area covered by forest: 11.32%, average garden size: 234.9m2, average distance to park/playing field: 280.3m.

Halifax: average CO2 per km2: 2.8kt, total area covered by forest: 8.85%, average garden size: 246m2, average distance to park/playing field: 317.17m.

Harrogate: average CO2 per km2: 0.8kt, total area covered by forest: 7.27%, average garden size: 443.6m2, average distance to park/playing field: 501.91m.

Rotherham: average CO2 per km2: 5.5kt, total area covered by forest: 10.28%, average garden size: 246.7m2, average distance to park/playing field: 319.23m.

Huddersfield: average CO2 per km2: 4.6kt, total area covered by forest: 1.79%, average garden size: 248.8m2, average distance to park/playing field: 279.87m.

Wakefield: average CO2 per km2: 1.3kt, total area covered by forest: 6.1%, average garden size: 412.2m2, average distance to park/playing field: 544.18m.

Sheffield: average CO2 per km2: 6kt, total area covered by forest: 13.31%, average garden size: 216.4m2, average distance to park/playing field: 315.79m.

Doncaster: average CO2 per km2: 3.5kt, total area covered by forest: 7.09%, average garden size: 267.2m2, average distance to park/playing field: 407.73m.

Selby: average CO2 per km2: 6kt, total area covered by forest: 7.53%, average garden size: 236.3m2, average distance to park/playing field: 314.24m.

York: average CO2 per km2: 3kt, total area covered by forest: 4.89%, average garden size: 262.9m2, average distance to park/playing field: 354.37m.

Leeds: average CO2 per km2: 7kt, total area covered by forest: 9.84%, average garden size: 228.3m2, average distance to park/playing field: 345.32m.

Bradford: average CO2 per km2: 5.6kt, total area covered by forest: 6.34%, average garden size: 212.4m2, average distance to park/playing field: 323.78m.

Hull: average CO2 per km2: 13.3kt, total area covered by forest: 8.75%, average garden size: 140.7m2, average distance to park/playing field: 395.87m.