Bristol has been named the rudest city in Britain. The West Country city topped a ranking of 20 UK cities scored on 12 different rude behaviours, from queue-jumping to talking loudly on the phone, edging out Hull and Coventry for the unwanted title.
The findings come from a Preply study, surveyed by Censuswide among 1,510 UK residents and published in 2024 (the fieldwork itself was carried out back in late 2022, so treat this as a snapshot from a couple of years ago rather than brand new data). Still, the behaviours it measures, things like interrupting, littering and blocking pavements, aren’t the sort of thing that changes overnight, so the results still feel familiar to anyone who’s braved a busy high street at rush hour.
There’s also a twist further down the table: London, so often blamed for Britain’s rudest reputation, only scraped into 6th place, well behind Bristol, Hull, Coventry and even Glasgow.
What actually counts as rude, according to the survey?
Censuswide asked residents to rate how common 12 specific rude behaviours were where they lived. These included things like not saying please or thank you, jumping queues, talking loudly on the phone in public, littering, not holding doors open, and being rude to shop or hospitality staff.
Each city was then given an overall rudeness score out of 10, based on how frequently residents reported seeing these behaviours. Bristol’s score of 5.84 put it clearly ahead of the rest of the pack, with Hull (5.74) and Coventry (5.70) rounding out the podium.
Nowhere scored particularly high in absolute terms; even Bristol’s 5.84 is barely above the halfway mark, which suggests most of Britain is, on balance, fairly civil. It’s the relative ranking that makes for the interesting reading, not the raw numbers.
The full top 10 rudest cities
Rudeness scores out of 10, according to Preply’s study of Censuswide data (fieldwork 2022, published 2024).
| Rank | City | Rudeness score (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bristol | 5.84 |
| 2 | Hull | 5.74 |
| 3 | Coventry | 5.70 |
| 4 | Glasgow | 5.57 |
| 5 | Edinburgh | 5.54 |
| 6 | London | 5.54 |
| 7 | Leeds | 5.52 |
| 8 | Belfast | 5.48 |
| 9 | Birmingham | 5.47 |
| 10 | Newcastle | 5.38 |
Why did London only come 6th?
Given its reputation for rushed commuters and no-eye-contact tube etiquette, you’d expect London to run away with this one. Instead, it tied with Edinburgh on 5.54 and landed mid-table, behind Bristol, Hull, Coventry and Glasgow.
Big cities with fast-paced daily life clearly don’t have a monopoly on rudeness.
Some of the smaller, tighter-knit cities on the list scored just as high, or higher, suggesting it’s less about population size and more about specific local habits, like how often people hold doors, or how tolerant a city is of queue-jumping.
It’s also worth remembering that a survey like this measures perception as much as reality. Residents are rating what they notice day to day, and a busy city like Bristol, with a packed centre and heavy footfall, may simply give people more chances to spot rude behaviour than a quieter town would.
So which UK cities are the politest?
The same study flips the table to reveal Britain’s politest cities: Sheffield and Derby, which tied on a score of 4.90, the lowest (and therefore best) score recorded.
Worth noting: this is a different measure from Preply’s separate Polite Cities Index, which used its own methodology and crowned Cambridge as Britain’s politest city.
The two studies aren’t directly comparable, so don’t be surprised if you see different cities named elsewhere as ‘most polite’.
Does living somewhere rude cost you anything?
Rudeness rankings make for a fun scroll, but there’s a genuine money angle buried in here too. Cities that score badly on liveability surveys, whether that’s rudeness, happiness or crime, don’t always come with a discount on the cost of living.
Bristol, for example, tops this rudeness table but is also one of the more expensive cities in the UK to buy or rent a home in, so residents are paying a premium to live somewhere that, by this survey at least, isn’t winning any friendliness contests.
The wider point stands across most of this list: a city’s reputation, good or bad, rarely lines up neatly with what it costs to actually live there.
Some of the friendlier-sounding places elsewhere in the UK come with lower house prices and rents, while some of the pricier cities score badly on liveability measures like this one.
If you’re weighing up a move for lifestyle reasons, it’s worth looking past the headline ranking and checking what you’d actually pay in rent, house prices and day-to-day costs in the areas you’re considering, rather than assuming a ‘friendlier’ or ‘ruder’ reputation tells you much about your finances either way.
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