The league table
New STI diagnoses per 100,000 residents in 2025 (all STIs excluding chlamydia in under-25s — the standard headline measure). The top 20 of 53 university towns and cities; the full sortable table is below.
Manchester takes the crown
Manchester's 924 diagnoses per 100,000 residents make it the STI capital of England outside London — not just among university towns, but among every district in the country. Its 5,449 new diagnoses in 2025 put it more than twice the national rate, and while England's STI rate fell 6.8% last year, Manchester's rose 2.5%.
It's a Greater Manchester one-two-three punch: Salford (847 per 100k, up 9% in a year) grabs third place, giving the conurbation two of the podium spots — with Brighton (859) squeezed between them in second.
Brighton doesn't leave empty-handed. England's unofficial LGBTQ+ capital keeps the syphilis crown at 41.2 diagnoses per 100,000 — nearly three times the national rate and comfortably ahead of Salford (29.2) and Manchester (27.6).
The surprise package is Lincoln: fourth place, ahead of Oxford, Liverpool and Birmingham. One likely reason — Lincoln is England's testing champion, finding chlamydia in young women at 3.4 times the national rate. Test more, find more (and that's a good thing — see below).
Zoom out and the pattern is stark: of the ten worst STI hotspots in England outside London, eight are university towns (fifteen of the top twenty). Collectively, England's uni towns run 55% higher than the rest of the country once London is set aside, and they account for roughly one in four of all new diagnoses in England.
Is it actually the students?
Full-time student share of the adult population (Census 2021) against the 2025 STI rate, for all 53 university towns.
Mostly, yes — the two move together. Across every non-London district in England, the share of full-time students in the adult population and the local STI rate correlate at r = 0.60; within the 53 uni towns themselves, each extra percentage point of students is worth roughly +14 diagnoses per 100,000 on the trend line.
But it isn't destiny. Loughborough — a town where students are nearly one in seven adults — is the safest uni town in England (199 per 100k, less than half the national rate; all that sport has to burn off something). Oxford has England's most student-heavy population (26.5% of adults) and still only manages fifth. And Nottingham, fourth-most student-dense, cut its rate by 18% in a single year.
Big-city nightlife, better access to sexual-health clinics, and how much a town actually tests all muddy the water — a district that tests harder will "look" worse. Our full methodology and caveats are below.
The honours board
Specialist titles, 2025 rates per 100,000. On the last one, higher genuinely means better — detection through screening is a public-health win.
Movers & shakers
Change in STI rate, 2024 → 2025. England overall: −6.8%.
The varsity match
New STI diagnoses per 100,000 residents, 2025.
Oxford "wins" by 66% — and it's pulling away fast: Oxford posted the third-biggest rise of any uni town (+11.8%) while Cambridge recorded one of the biggest falls (−23.6%). The pattern holds more broadly, though: towns hosting Russell Group universities average 473 per 100,000 against 383 for everyone else — a 23% posh-uni premium.
Before anyone panics: England's STI rate actually fell 6.8% in 2025 and is down a quarter since 2019. These are whole-town diagnosis rates, not rates among students — and a high rate partly reflects a town that tests properly, which is exactly what you want.
The takeaway is boringly sensible: if you're heading to any of these fine institutions (or just live near one), condoms work, most STIs are easily treated, and testing is free, fast and often postal. Find yours at nhs.uk/sexual-health-services.
The full table — all 53
Click any column heading to sort. Rates per 100,000 residents, 2025; students % = full-time students among adults 16+, Census 2021.
| # | Town | Universities | New STIs /100k | vs 2024 | Gonorrhoea | Syphilis | Students % |
|---|
Methodology & sources
What we measured
The headline ranking uses the standard official measure of STI burden: new STI diagnoses per 100,000 residents, excluding chlamydia diagnoses in under-25s (OHID Fingertips indicator 91306), for calendar year 2025 — the latest full year published. Specialist tables use gonorrhoea (90759) and syphilis (90742) diagnostic rates, and the chlamydia detection rate among women aged 15–24 (90776). All are published by the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities / UK Health Security Agency from GUMCAD/CTAD surveillance data, at lower-tier local-authority level (April 2023 boundaries).
What counts as a university town
We took every English lower-tier local authority containing the main campus of at least one substantial campus-based university — 53 in all, from Manchester to Winchester. Each town's figures are the whole local authority's: rates describe everyone who lives there, not students specifically. Student population share is the proportion of residents aged 16+ recorded as full-time students in Census 2021 (table TS062, category L15).
- London is excluded from the ranking: its ~40 universities can't be pinned to individual boroughs, and London's rates are in a different league (the capital averaged 1,050 per 100,000 in 2025 — Lambeth alone hit 2,445). Where we compare uni towns with "the rest of England", London is excluded from both sides.
- Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish their sexual-health data separately and on different definitions, so the index covers England only.
- A few universities have no sensible town-sized authority to map to (e.g. Falmouth and Cumbria's campuses sit inside very large rural authorities) and are excluded rather than misrepresented.
Caveats we'd raise ourselves
- Diagnosis rates partly reflect testing effort and clinic access — a town that screens hard (hello, Lincoln) finds more. That's a public-health success, not just an infection problem.
- University cities are also nightlife cities; students are far from the only people being diagnosed. The correlation with student share (r = 0.60 across 259 non-London districts; 0.41 within the 53 towns) is real but not a causal claim.
- Rates are per 100,000 residents of all ages, so towns with large young-adult populations naturally sit higher.
- Russell Group comparison averages the 15 towns hosting a Russell Group main campus against the other 38 (unweighted means).
Sources & licence
Sexual-health data: OHID Fingertips, Sexual and Reproductive Health Profiles (accessed 7 August 2026). Student population: ONS Census 2021. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; census data Crown copyright. Our compiled dataset is free to download below.
Press kit
Everything on this page — findings, tables and charts — is free for publication, in print or online, with credit to Erobella and (online) a link to this page. The press release, full dataset and methodology are yours:
Press & data enquiries welcome — details in the press release.