Both the name of the borough and the borough's HQ (located 30 miles north-east of Charing Cross in central Essex), Chelmsford has enjoyed several new developments lately. 53 Park Central, whose bus station and shops opened in January 2007, now has luxury apartments available - for a price.
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Chelmsford is the county town of Essex, 30 miles northeast of central London. This is officially the UK's hottest spot, and we're not talking nightlife or curry houses - we mean microclimate. Summers here have hit the heights of 35.2 degrees celsius, and there's a distinctive lack of clouds over the local economy.
Unfortunately it's not Number 1, as every four hours someone is a victim of violent crime, and every two hours there's a theft, which may explain why it's such a steal when it comes to house prices.
Other areas are also pressing ahead with ambitious plans for up to 3,500 new homes pencilled in for the Springfield area. Some places in Chelmsford are being revamped rather than built from scratch, including one of the town's tallest buildings, Melbourne Court. Melbourne Court is rumoured to be benefiting from refurbishment funds totalling up to an estimated £10 million.
Then there's the prospective Waterside development, which would include a new bridge and central link road to link the proposed shopping and dining complex to the best transport links.
Despite all the renovation and building work, Chelmsford council has at least some environmental concerns in mind, with the borough being one of the first to expand its recycling scheme to include flats as well as houses. Getting to London, should you wish - like many Chelmsford denizens - is a breeze; trains run every few minutes or so during peak times and take around 40 minutes. If you're more of a local traveller, you can look forward to hitting 60, when free bus passes are available to all.
Popular with young, affluent commuter families, the schools in Chelmsford boast results only a whisker higher than national averages, but represent a huge range of different educational establishments. Twenty five schools within 25 miles of the town centre, for example, achieve perfect scores in secondary school Science and respectable high 90s percentages in Maths and English.
Whether you want to raise your children in a borough that plays host to one of Britain's biggest music festivals is up to you. But as the V-Festival in Hylands has a rep for being one of the more civilised festivals of the summer, it could be the perfect place to prove to yourself that you can still rock with the best of them - even if you do take the kids along.
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Find out which lucky borough made it in at number 7 in 2007 >>
Local area info on Chelmsford from upmystreet.com >>
Chelmsford Borough Council >>
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