The city of Manchester has been voted the least polite city in the UK. According to a survey by language learning platform Preply, the city is one of the rudest coming ahead of London and Sunderland who make up the podium.
Manchester’s position as the least polite in the UK was decided after Preply compared their TripAdvisor reviews and statistics from Numbeo to give each location a score out of 30. The lower the score, the less polite the city was.
TripAdvisor reviews were scanned for key works such as “friendly”, “fantastic”, “polite”, and “friendly” while Numbeo’s data included information such as a city’s safety index and a cleanliness score.
After analysis of both data sets, Manchester scored just 3.6 out of 30, close to less than half of London’s 6.6 and Sunderland’s 8.6 respectively.
However, these three weren’t the only low scorers in Preply’s top 10. Wolverhampton came in a close fourth with 9.5 and Peterborough fifth with 9.7. Further south, Devon’s Plymouth had a score of just 10.7 in sixth, only slightly worse than Liverpool on 10.9.
In eight, and with the same score as Liverpool, was Wales’ Newport on 10.9. Further east, Birmingham scored 11.6 in eight and Glasgow 12.1 in ninth. Rounding out the top 10 was Nottingham on 12.2.
Despite being a cultural hub, Manchester was listed as the least polite city in the UK for several reasons. Analysis of TripAdvisor reviews found that it scored just 1.5 out of 10 for politeness and only 15 percent of reviews praised its landmarks and hotels for their politeness.
Furthermore, Manchester also scored the lowest on the safety index at just 0.6 and was fourth from the bottom on the cleanliness score.
Coming in second behind Manchester was the UK’s capital, London, which scored the worst for politeness of any city in the UK with zero out of 10. Furthermore, four percent of its hotels, attractions, and landmarks also scored poorly for politeness.
London also only scored one out of 10 for safety, much lower than most on Preply’s list.
Making up the top three was Sunderland which experienced a strange mix of high and low scores. It did well on politeness with seven out of 10, but badly elsewhere.
Its rating was dragged down by low scores for safety – 0.6 – and just one out of 10 for cleanliness which brought it closer to London’s overall score.
In contrast, to Manchester, London and Sunderland, Cambridge, Newcastle and Sheffield were voted the top three most polite cities in the UK.
Cambridge scored 26 out of 30 to take first place while Newcastle was a distant second on 19.9 and Sheffield missed out on silver with 18.2.
Coming in fourth, fifth, and sixth with 18.1, 17.8 and 16.6 respectively were Leicester, Cardiff, and Leeds.
Rounding out the top 10 were Bristol on 16.3, Edinburgh on 15.9, Milton Keynes on 15.6, and Southampton on 15.1.