# PRESS RELEASE

**For immediate release, September 2026**

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# MANCHESTER HAS THE HIGHEST STI RATE OF ANY UNIVERSITY TOWN IN ENGLAND, AS FRESHERS ARRIVE DURING SEXUAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

## New analysis of official 2025 data ranks all 60 English university towns. Eight of the ten highest-rate places outside London are university towns, and Oxford's rate is now 66% higher than Cambridge's.

Students are arriving for Freshers' Week in the middle of Sexual Health Awareness Month, days after Brook's Sexual Health Week (14 to 20 September). New analysis by Erobella has looked up the official STI rate for the town around every university in England and ranked them.

The **University Towns STI Index** uses the latest full-year figures (calendar year 2025) from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID). It covers every English council area that contains a university's main campus, 60 in all, home to 93 universities. There is a search tool covering every English university (London's included), an interactive map and a head-to-head comparison at [erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index](https://erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/).

**Manchester has the highest rate: 924 new diagnoses per 100,000 residents, more than double the England average of 441, and higher than any other district in the country outside London.** It overtook Brighton this year. England's overall rate fell 6.8% in 2025; Manchester's rose 2.5%.

## Key findings

- **Manchester is first** of the 60 university towns, with 924 new STI diagnoses per 100,000 residents in 2025 (5,449 in total), 2.1 times the national rate. It also has England's highest gonorrhoea rate outside London (297.6 per 100,000).
- **Greater Manchester takes two of the top three places.** Salford is third at 847 per 100,000, up 9% on the year.
- **Brighton is second** (859 per 100,000). Its headline rate is falling, but it has the highest syphilis rate of any university town at 41.2 per 100,000, roughly three times the national figure and the second highest of any English district outside London (after Blackpool).
- **Oxford's rate is 66% higher than Cambridge's**: 674 per 100,000 (5th) against 406 (22nd). The gap is widening. Oxford rose 11.8% in 2025 while Cambridge fell 23.6% and dropped 12 places.
- **Eight of the ten districts with England's highest STI rates outside London contain a university's main campus** (fifteen of the top twenty). The two that don't: Blackpool and Slough.
- **University towns as a group run 45% above the rest of England** once London is taken out of both sides of the comparison, and account for more than a quarter of all new diagnoses in the country.
- **Towns with a Russell Group university average 473 diagnoses per 100,000, against 358** for the other towns, a gap of 32%.
- **Lincoln is fourth** (749 per 100,000), above Oxford, Liverpool and Birmingham. It also has the highest chlamydia detection rate among young women of any district in England outside London, at three times the national average. Towns that test more find more, and public-health guidance treats wider screening as a good thing.
- **The biggest movers since 2024**: Exeter climbed 16 places and Birmingham ten (its rate rose 24.8%, the biggest rise of any city on the list). Middlesbrough fell 14 places and Plymouth 13; Middlesbrough's rate fell furthest (down 29.2%).
- **The lowest rate of any large student town is Loughborough** (199 per 100,000, less than half the national figure). The lowest rates overall are in rural campus districts such as Cirencester (Royal Agricultural University, 177) and Hartpury (181).
- **Nineteen of the 60 towns saw rates rise in 2025** against the national fall.
- **London is ranked separately.** Nine of its 15 university boroughs record rates above Manchester's, led by Southwark (London South Bank University) at 2,204 per 100,000, five times the England figure. But London's rates have little to do with students: add the boroughs to the main table and the correlation between student numbers and STI rates drops from 0.50 to 0.17, and the two highest-rate boroughs in the city, Lambeth (2,445) and Hackney (2,113), have no university main campus at all.
- **Student numbers and STI rates go together.** Across all 259 non-London districts in England, the correlation between the share of full-time students and the local STI rate is r = 0.60.

## The ten highest-ranked towns

| 2025 | 2024 | Town | New STIs per 100,000 (2025) | vs 2024 |
|------|------|------|------------------------------|---------|
| 1 | 2 | Manchester | 924 | +2.5% |
| 2 | 1 | Brighton | 859 | −6.7% |
| 3 | 4 | Salford | 847 | +9.0% |
| 4 | 3 | Lincoln | 749 | −8.4% |
| 5 | 7 | Oxford | 674 | +11.8% |
| 6 | 5 | Liverpool | 638 | −12.9% |
| 7 | 8 | Norwich | 573 | +5.8% |
| 8 | 18 | Birmingham | 565 | +24.8% |
| 9 | 6 | Nottingham | 523 | −18.3% |
| 10 | 14 | Reading | 522 | +5.2% |

*England average: 441 per 100,000. Full 60-town table with 2024 positions, interactive map, university search and head-to-head tool: [erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index](https://erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/)*

## Comment

Brenda Jensen, Head of Data & Research at Erobella, said:

> "University towns are young and social, so nobody should be shocked that they sit high on this list. What matters is the detail. Some of the highest-placed towns are also the ones testing hardest, and finding infections is exactly what a good sexual-health service is supposed to do.
>
> "The national picture is actually encouraging. England's rate fell again last year and is down a quarter since 2019. With Freshers' Week and Sexual Health Awareness Month landing in the same fortnight, the message for every student arriving this month is simple: testing is free, confidential and usually by post, and most STIs are easy to treat. Knowing where you stand is the grown-up default."

## Notes to editors

1. **About the data.** The index ranks every English lower-tier local authority containing the main campus of a university (60 in total, 93 universities) by the standard official measure of STI burden: new STI diagnoses per 100,000 residents, excluding chlamydia diagnoses in under-25s (OHID Fingertips indicator 91306), calendar year 2025, the latest full year published. That measure counted 258,649 diagnoses in England in 2025; UKHSA's total including everything was 334,151 (down 8.3% from 364,261 in 2024). Gonorrhoea (indicator 90759), syphilis (90742) and chlamydia detection in women aged 15 to 24 (90776) are reported separately.
2. **Why towns, not universities.** There is no official STI data by university, so the index starts from the universities and takes the council area each main campus sits in. Each figure describes everyone living in a university's town, not students alone. Seven universities sit in large rural districts (Falmouth, Cumbria, Buckingham and Buckinghamshire New, Harper Adams, the Royal Agricultural University, Hartpury and Cranfield) and are included and flagged as such.
3. **Student numbers** are from the ONS Census 2021 (full-time students as a share of residents aged 16 and over, table TS062). Rank movement compares the same 60 towns' 2024 and 2025 rates.
4. **England only, London separately.** London's 15 university boroughs are ranked in their own panel rather than the main table: its universities cannot be attributed cleanly to boroughs (King's College London alone spans Westminster, Southwark and Lambeth, where rates are 1,842, 2,204 and 2,445), and London's rates sit far above the rest of the country (1,050 per 100,000 across the capital in 2025) for reasons that have little to do with students. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland publish sexual-health data separately and on different definitions.
5. **Caveats.** Diagnosis rates partly reflect testing effort and access to clinics. University cities also have large night-time economies, and students are not the only people being diagnosed. The correlation with student share is an association, not proof of cause. Full method at [erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/#method](https://erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/#method).
6. **Verification.** Figures were checked on 20 September 2026 against UKHSA's *Sexually transmitted infections and screening for chlamydia in England: 2025 report* (published 2 June 2026). The national gonorrhoea and syphilis changes match exactly.
7. **Sources and licence.** Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OHID Fingertips, Sexual and Reproductive Health Profiles; UKHSA STI annual data tables); Census 2021 data © Crown copyright. Erobella's dataset is free to download at [erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/#press](https://erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/#press).
8. **Reuse.** All findings, tables and charts are free to publish in print or online with a credit to **Erobella** and, online, a link to [erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index](https://erobella.com/research/uni-towns-std-index/). Every university's card has its own link.
9. **About Erobella.** Erobella is the UK's fastest growing adult website and a progressive brand. Its Data & Research team publishes original studies on sex, sexuality and sexual health, including its annual survey of sex-worker wellbeing, the Liberal Cities Index, Out on Campus (an index of LGBTQ+ inclusion at more than 1,700 US colleges) and the Sex Work Statistics series. All are free to read at [erobella.com/research](https://erobella.com/research/).

**Press contact:** Dara Weston, PR Manager, Erobella: [dara@erobella.com](mailto:dara@erobella.com)

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