We hold ratings for 7,630 car wash locations across the UK. Grouping them by city produces a league table, and league tables get clicked — so here it is. But the interesting result is not who won. It is how little separates anyone.
The table
Cities with at least 100 rated locations, ranked by mean rating:
| # | City | Rated locations | Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leicester | 225 | 4.40 |
| 2 | Norwich | 222 | 4.39 |
| 3 | Halifax | 226 | 4.38 |
| 4 | Leeds | 452 | 4.37 |
| 5 | Birmingham | 666 | 4.33 |
| 6 | Sheffield | 531 | 4.32 |
| 7 | Cardiff | 215 | 4.29 |
| 8 | Oldham | 280 | 4.28 |
| 9 | Salford | 220 | 4.28 |
| 10 | Wolverhampton | 480 | 4.28 |
| 11 | Liverpool | 537 | 4.26 |
| 12 | Wigan | 239 | 4.26 |
| 13 | Redbridge | 247 | 4.25 |
| 14 | Brent | 108 | 4.24 |
| 15 | Barnet | 339 | 4.22 |
| 16 | Worthing | 361 | 4.22 |
| 17 | Belfast | 254 | 4.21 |
| 18 | Wakefield | 269 | 4.21 |
| 19 | Coventry | 364 | 4.20 |
| 20 | Derby | 447 | 4.19 |
| 21 | Swansea | 257 | 4.18 |
| 22 | Westminster | 691 | 4.13 |
The gap is 0.27 stars. That’s the story.
Top to bottom, the entire country fits inside a quarter of a star. For comparison, the gap between a valeting service and a self-service jet wash in the same town is 1.44 stars — more than five times larger.
What kind of wash you pick matters vastly more than which city you are in. If you are in Westminster and want a well-rated wash, you will find one; there are 691 rated sites to choose from and plenty of them are excellent. The city average tells you nothing about the site you are about to drive to.
This is what you would expect from a fragmented, low-barrier trade. Car washing has no national quality regulator, no dominant chain setting a floor, and almost no economies of scale. Every site is essentially an independent operation, so quality varies far more within a city than between cities.
Why Westminster comes last, and why it isn’t damning
Westminster’s 4.13 is the lowest figure in the table and also the least surprising. Central London concentrates every factor that drags ratings down:
- Land is expensive, so sites are cramped and queues are longer. “Waited 40 minutes” is a one-star review even when the wash itself was fine.
- Access is hard. Several of the worst-rated central London sites have review text complaining about the approach road rather than the service.
- Expectations are higher, because prices are higher. The same wash that delights someone paying £8 disappoints someone paying £20.
- Volume. Westminster has more rated sites than anywhere else in our data. More reviews means regression toward the true mean, and the true mean of any service business is not 4.9.
That last point is worth generalising. Small samples inflate averages. If a city ranking looks flattering, check the location count first.
What the top of the table has in common
Leicester, Norwich, Halifax and Leeds share a profile: mid-sized cities, plentiful cheap land on arterial roads, and a hand wash trade that competes on quality because it cannot compete on convenience. Nobody in Halifax is queueing forty minutes for a wash — if one site is slow, there is another one a mile down the road.
How to actually use this
Don’t. Not for choosing a wash, anyway. A 0.27-star spread across the country is noise next to the variation you will find on a single high street.
What works instead:
- Filter to your city, then sort by rating and review count — see the city pages.
- Discount any 5.0 with fewer than 20 reviews.
- Read the newest three reviews. Staff change; averages lag by years.
- Check the site is open before you leave, using Near Me.
Averages calculated from our own directory on 26 July 2026. Cities are Google Maps administrative areas, so London appears as individual boroughs (Westminster, Barnet, Brent, Redbridge) rather than as a single city. Only locations carrying a Google rating are included; averages are unweighted per location.