Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
The average domestic rates bill is £1,347 a year. Population 9,529: a town in Ards and North Down, Northern Ireland.
Easy on the wallet, harder on other counts. Where it does best is cost of living: the median home sold for £208,200, 4.2 years of area income. The trade-off is health (C) — life expectancy is 80.1 for men and 83.7 for women. It lags on walkability as well — on the way to work, 10% walk, cycle or take a bus or train. Put together, the subjects come to an A overall, better than 93% of UK towns. In the ranking it comes #2 of 6 in Ards and North Down and #8 of 63 in Northern Ireland.
Figures: prices, HM Land Registry (LPS), 2022 to 2024 at early-2025 prices · life expectancy, ONS · commuting, Census 2021.
This town's Cost Grade uses house prices and the domestic rates bill: Northern Ireland has no council tax, and no rents are published for its council areas. This town's Health Grade uses NISRA's life expectancy for its district electoral area (2022 to 2024) and two Census 2021 measures, bad health and disability, adjusted for age. Healthy life expectancy and the early-death and hospital measures English towns use aren't published for small areas in Northern Ireland. This town's School Grade uses GCSE results at the post-primary schools its children travel to, grammar and non-grammar, compared with schools across Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland publishes no primary school results. Northern Ireland has no Jobs Grade (no small-area income, claimant or job-access data is published) and no Hazards Grade (its flood maps aren't open data).
The 3 things Comber does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Northern Ireland), ordered by how far Comber is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
How TownRatings grades towns →
The Historic Environment Division lists 30 buildings inside Comber’s settlement, 1 of them in the second grade.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Comber.
The owner-occupied share of households is 69%. Council and housing-body homes hold 17% of households. It is the 3rd most expensive of 6 towns of 2,500+ in Ards and North Down.
NISRA / Land & Property Services ward sale prices and domestic rates · NISRA Census 2021 tenure · OGL · The figure is NISRA’s median sale price for the wards around Comber, 2022 to 2024, brought to early-2025 prices and weighted by sales.
Of its 4 schools, two are shown below, each with the reason. Some 1,306 pupils attend Comber’s three primaries and one secondary.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrews Memorial Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 384 | – |
| Nendrum CollegeLargest post-primary schoolPost-primary | Post-primary | 470 | B |
The Police Service of Northern Ireland recorded 263 crimes inside Comber’s settlement in the 12 months to August 2026, plus 157 reports of anti-social behaviour. Violence comes to 15.6 per 1,000 residents a year. Homes saw 6.4 burglaries and acts of damage per 1,000 residents a year, close to Ards and North Down’s towns (6.4) and below Northern Ireland’s towns (8.8).
Not gradedAnti-social behaviour, shoplifting and other theft are shown but left out of the Safety Grade, which counts violence and crimes against homes and vehicles per resident.
data.police.uk street-level crime · points inside the NISRA settlement boundary · OGL
The Census was taken on 21 March 2021, in lockdown, so 19% of workers were mainly at home; shares here are of those who travelled.
Comber counts 0.4 jobs per working resident. 13% of commuters who live in Comber also work there. Working mainly from home: 19% of workers, below Ards and North Down’s towns (22%) and close to Northern Ireland’s towns (18%).
NISRA Census 2021, method of travel to work · OGL
At the census, 7.1% of people here described their health as bad or very bad. A quarter of residents have a disability, close to both Ards and North Down’s towns (25%) and Northern Ireland’s towns (26%).
| Census 2021 | Comber | Ards and North Down | Northern Ireland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 78% | 78% | 77% |
| Bad or very bad health | 7.1% | 7.3% | 8.7% |
| Disabled (Equality Act) | 25% | 25% | 26% |
NISRA Census 2021, general health and disability · NISRA life expectancy by district electoral area, 2022–24 · OGL · Read these answers with age in mind: they aren’t adjusted, so younger places do better. The Health Grade uses age-adjusted measures, life expectancy among them.
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Grade B+ covers 1 of them. Per 10,000 residents, Comber counts 31 listed buildings, between Ards and North Down’s towns (19) and Northern Ireland’s towns (34).
HED list, October 2026 · Valuation Office Agency, homes by build period · OGL
Young adults of 15 to 24 are a tenth of the population. 16% are under 15, lower than both Ards and North Down’s towns (17%) and Northern Ireland’s towns (19%). Typical age in Comber: 46.1, the median.
52% women, 48% men
About 94 men for every 100 women. Across Northern Ireland, 51% of residents are women. Women live longer than men, so towns with many older residents have more women.
| Comber | Ards and North Down | Northern Ireland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 16% | 17% | 19% |
| 15–24 | 9.6% | 10% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 23% | 24% | 27% |
| 45–64 | 27% | 27% | 26% |
| 65+ | 24% | 22% | 17% |
| No qualifications | 22% | 19% | 25% |
| A levels or similar | 14% | 16% | 16% |
| Degree level | 31% | 34% | 32% |
NISRA Census 2021 · Ards and North Down and Northern Ireland: all residents of their settlements · Women and men: whole data zones, which approximate the town’s boundary · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Comber. Best known first.
Abbey or prioryPriory of Saint Columba4.5 km outside town, to the northeastMuseumMuseumArds Arts Centre4.6 km outside town, to the northeastMuseumMuseumWar Years Remembered4.9 km outside town, to the northeastCastleCastleScrabo Tower2.7 km outside town, to the northeastPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
17 notable people were born in Comber.
Thomas Andrews: Original uploader was User:Gelosia at en.wikipedia, Public domain · Tommy Casey: YNWA2305, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jonny Kane: David Merrett from Daventry, England, CC BY 2.0 · Robert Rollo Gillespie: Author of book: William Thorn, 1780-1843. Engraving "from a painting by Mr Chinnery in Calcutta, 1814". This is presumably George Chinnery, 1774-1852, Public domain · Ottilie Patterson: Joop van Bilsen for Anefo, CC0
The nearest settlements, from NISRA’s 2015 boundaries. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comber | 9,529 | — | A | A+ | A− | C |
| Ballygowan | 3,138 | 3.7 | A | A+ | A | C+ |
| Newtownards | 29,677 | 3.9 | A− | A+ | C+ | C− |
| Metropolitan Castlereagh | 58,763 | 5.1 | A+ | A+ | A− | C |
| Carryduff | 7,173 | 6.3 | A+ | A+ | A | B |
| Holywood | 10,757 | 7.1 | A | A | B+ | C+ |
| Saintfield | 3,588 | 7.2 | A− | A+ | A | C |
| Bangor | 64,596 | 7.8 | B+ | A+ | B+ | C |
People: Census 2021. Miles: centre to centre.
Northern Ireland publishes no primary results. 1 post-primary school is inside the town; places are handled by the Education Authority.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland recorded 263 crimes inside Comber’s settlement in the 12 months to August 2026, 63% of them violence and sexual offences, a police category that includes harassment and stalking.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale in 2022 to 2024, at early-2025 prices, was £208,200, against £277,000 in the typical UK town. On cost of living it is the 56th most affordable of 63 Northern Ireland towns.
Northern Ireland has no council tax: homes pay domestic rates, set on the home’s capital value, and the rates also pay for water. The average bill in Ards and North Down is about £1,347 a year for 2026–27, against England’s average council tax per home of £1,868. Your own bill depends on your home’s value; check it with Land & Property Services on nidirect.
Town in Ards and North Down, Northern Ireland
Comber is a settlement of 9,529 people, in the Ards and North Down council area. TownRatings uses NISRA’s settlements (the 2015 Settlement Development Limits) as Northern Ireland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council district, so its figures cover the town itself.
Built from NISRA geography and Census 2021
Sources: NISRA Census 2021, data zones best-fitted to the NISRA Settlement Development Limits 2015 (settlement totals from NISRA where it publishes them) · NISRA / Land & Property Services verified residential sales by ward, 2005 to 2024, new and existing dwellings (medians; the 2022 to 2024 headline brought to early-2025 prices with the LPS house price index, which runs to 2026) · Land & Property Services domestic rates paid by council, 2025-26, and Department of Finance rate poundages 2026-27 · data.police.uk street-level crime (Police Service of Northern Ireland), 36 months to August 2026, points inside the settlement boundary · NISRA life expectancy by district electoral area (2022 to 2024) and NISRA Census 2021 general health and disability, adjusted for age · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils · Department of Education examination performance at post-primary schools 2024/25 and school-level enrolment data 2025/26 · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.