NearbyUK

Everything about a town in one place, built on 18 public data sources, starting with Ely, Cambridgeshire.

What this build does

NearbyUK is a local information brand: a directory and information website built to help people in UK towns find local businesses and everything else about where they live, starting with Ely, Cambridgeshire. It is a data build first. Behind the pages sit public datasets and live feeds, from National Rail departures to food hygiene ratings, each one named, dated and refreshed on its own timetable, so what people read is current.

About NearbyUK

NearbyUK brings a town's businesses and information together in one place: what is open, what is on, when the bins go out, how to get around, what the schools and GPs are like, and who to call. In Ely it lists 1,010 local businesses, each checked against its own website, alongside ten information pages about the town, and businesses can claim and update their own listing.

nearbyuk.com →

What it runs on

Astro

TypeScript

Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare R2

Cloudflare D1PagefindMapLibre

Resend

GitHub

What we built

Live, as it happens

Live train departures and disruption notices from National Rail, fetched through the site's own server so the access key stays private, and refreshed every minute.

Live bus positions on the transport map from the Bus Open Data Service, and the next bus from any stop worked out from the timetables.

Open now worked out on the visitor's own phone, from each business's opening hours.

Public data, kept fresh

Food hygiene ratings from the Food Standards Agency, matched to the businesses they belong to.

Schools from the Department for Education with their Ofsted outcomes, and GPs, dentists and pharmacies from the NHS register with their Care Quality Commission ratings.

Crime from Police.uk, counted inside Ely's real boundary and set against the rest of the county.

House prices from the Land Registry, fuel prices from every forecourt within 16km, bus stops from the national register, local news, and events gathered from 33 sources.

Checks that keep it honest

Every source has a shelf life. If a feed goes stale, the site refuses to publish rather than show old figures.

Each source is named and dated on the page it feeds, and a methodology page explains how every figure is worked out.

A fair star ranking: thin ratings are pulled toward the average, so three five-star reviews do not outrank a business with dozens at 4.9.

Listings with substance

1,010 Ely businesses across 592 categories, each enriched from its own website and matched to hygiene, school, health and sport records, with any mismatch checked by a person.

A listing is only put in front of Google when it adds something beyond the basic record.

Businesses can claim their own listing, and every claim reaches us straight away for a one-tap decision.

Built to scale

More than 1,100 pages for one town, served from Cloudflare storage through the site's own server, so it can grow to hundreds of towns past the file limits of ordinary hosting.

Fast, private search across every business, and maps on every category page.