A 0–100 read on the lifestyle a village offers — the "would I love it here?" question — built from what the village actually provides, not from marketing copy.
| Component | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Care continuum | 25% | How far care extends on site — independent living through serviced apartments, rest home, hospital and secure dementia care. More levels mean fewer forced moves later. |
| Amenities | 20% | Facilities on the ground — dining, pool, gym, cinema, gardens, workshop and so on, with diminishing returns so a long list doesn't automatically win. |
| Community life | 20% | Signals of a living community: an activities programme and its frequency, clubs, events, shared dining, a village van. |
| Services | 10% | Practical support — nurse on site, GP visits, meals, housekeeping, 24/7 call bells. |
| Location | 25% | Coming next: walkability and proximity scoring. Until it ships, scores are renormalised over the present components. |
A thin source page isn't a bad village; it's missing data. We publish a Life Score only when a village has a real lifestyle signal (facilities or community data) and at least 55% of the rubric's weight is covered. Below that, the village shows "No data yet" rather than a misleadingly low number. We also publish lifestyle data only where the source page maps to exactly one registered village — contested or uncertain matches are held back entirely.
Operator websites and the Village Guide directory, normalised into a fixed vocabulary so every village is scored on the same checklist. Care levels are the component operators under-report most — enriching them from operator sites directly is the current quality focus, and scores update as coverage improves.
They answer different questions for different people: the resident asks "would I love living here?"; the family asks "what comes back to the estate?". Our data shows the two are genuinely uncorrelated — some of the loveliest villages have the least family-friendly filed terms. One blended number would hide exactly the trade-off this site exists to expose, so you always see both. The residents' own ★ rating (from reviews) is the third, separate signal where available.
Version 1, July 2026. Operators who spot missing facilities or care levels can tell us — verified additions raise the score, and that's exactly how it should work.