The Leeds areas that just missed out and the neighbourhoods to watch in The Sunday Times Best Places to Live Guide

The 2022 guide, which was released on Friday, April 8, named Ilkley as the best place to live in the UK.

Leeds city centre was also named as one of the best places to live in the north.

This year, judges did not feature Manchester or Liverpool, making Leeds the 'top northern city'.

2022 also sees past winner York drop out of the publication entirely for the first time since 2019, despite scoring highly in the past for its transport links and excellent schools.

Eight of the top 10 entries for the north this year are in Yorkshire; the Barnsley village of Cawthorne, Captain Cook's birthplace of Great Ayton on the edge of the North York Moors, the Vale of York village of Hovingham, and Leeds city centre join Ilkley, Harrogate and Slaithwaite, the mill village near Huddersfield that made its debut last year.

Areas that just missed out on inclusion include popular suburbs such as Farsley, Chapel Allerton and Horsforth.

Guide editor Tim Palmer said: "In Leeds, Farsley is an area we will look at harder in the future. We also want to consider the Aire Valley, which is more affordable. It's ended up quite a high-end list this year.

"The places that did not quite make it would include a lot of previous entries which are still good. Malton has a great food scene but too much traffic.

"Chapel Allerton and/or Horsforth if we'd have had room for a Leeds suburb, and Saltaire, which is great but the gorgeous Salt cottages aren't best suited to modern living.

"Otley and Skipton are both good, but lost out to Ilkley. We also liked Clapham, in the tourist heart of the Dales but still with a brilliant community-run village shop. Pickering and Kirkbymoorside are places I'll definitely try and look at in the future.

"We did think hard about York, but it's now so popular that it's not an easy place to afford/buy or even to get around."