The best (and worst) London boroughs for walking and cycling

In recent years, London’s cycle network has gone from strength to strength. The capital reached a milestone of 400 kilometres of cycle paths last year, with two-wheeled Londoners now able to get right across the city via a network of cycleways and green spaces. And London’s only getting more bike-friendly, with one of the busiest streets in the West End set to soon receive a cycle-friendly makeover.

Reflecting some of those massive changes to the city, there’s been a shake up in the official ranking of London’s most walkable and cyclable boroughs by the Healthy Streets Scorecard.

The scorecard sets out to rate London boroughs on factors concerning healthy and sustainable mobility. Indicators of how good a borough is for walkers and cyclists range from the number of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and 20mph zones to road collision casualty rates.

Top of the 2025 Healthy Streets Scorecard was… The City of London! Which, we know, we know, isn’t a borough at all – but for the purposes of the study it was considered one. The City climbed up one spot from last year, beating Islington to first place.

The Square Mile scored 7.89 out of 10 and did particularly well with indicators like ‘percentage of households without a car’ (scoring 75 percent), how much of its transport is sustainable (95.9 percent, the highest in London) and how much people walk rather than use other modes of transport.

The Scorecard admits that the City ‘is not always comparable’ to more residential boroughs – so it also recognises the best inner and outer London boroughs for cyclists and walkers, as well as a ‘most improved’ award.

The best inner borough was Islington, scoring 7.54 overall. All roads in the north London borough are 20mph, 87 percent of journeys are made by sustainable means and there are only 29 cars per 100 households.

The best outer London borough in the study was Waltham Forest. A high percentage of roads with protected cycle track (12 percent) helped WF score an outer-London best score of 5.55 out of 10.

‘Most improved’ went to Newham, with the east London borough jumping five places from 13th to 8th. This was partly down to the borough increasing its number of 20mph roads and traffic-free ‘school streets’.

Down the bottom of the 2025 Healthy Streets Scorecard was Bexley. The outer-southeast London borough was criticised for taking ‘little or no action on most indicators’, and scored worst for number of LTNs, ‘school streets’, roads with bus priority and sustainable transport journeys.

You can check out this year’s Healthy Streets Scorecard – and see where your borough ranked – on the official website here.

Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel.