Online, reasonably well. Anywhere that needs wheels, not unless they're yours. Half the town drives to work. Around a third works from home. The station gets more admiration for its architecture than it gets passengers. Battle is a car town that happens to have a nice railway station.
Battle has its own station on the Hastings line, a Victorian Gothic revival building that Historic England has listed at Grade II, and Crowhurst station is the next stop down. At the 2021 Census, only 2% of working residents went to work by train. The town has 40 bus stops, and about 1% of workers commuted by bus. Plenty of people in Battle know how handsome the station is. Very few of them use it to get to work.
The commute is mostly done without leaving home or from behind the wheel. At the 2021 Census, about 50% of working residents drove to work and about 35% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 7% and cycling about 1%. Only about 15% of households have no car, and about 45% have two or more. A second car isn't a luxury here, it's how two working adults both get out of the house on a weekday.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area as a whole, not worked out from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 10 minutes away by car, 14 by bike, 17 by public transport and 29 on foot. Walking to a GP takes about 26 minutes, against 9 by car and 16 by public transport. A food store is about 25 minutes' walk or 9 minutes' drive. A hospital is about 20 minutes by car and 39 by public transport. The one that matters for a working household is employment: about 18 minutes by car, 47 by public transport and two hours on foot. Walking to a job isn't a realistic option from Battle. The public transport times date from 2019, and services have been cut since, so read those with more caution than the car and walking times.
The bus figures are current, and they're thin. The average stop sees about 14 departures on a weekday and 0.6 in the peak hour. All the stops with timetable data do get some weekend service. A bus network that runs on Sunday but can't reliably get you anywhere by nine on a Monday isn't one you can plan a job around.
Broadband is the better story. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 62% of premises, superfast reaches about 99%, and 0% fall below the universal service minimum. For the third of residents who work from home, that's the connection that matters.
Mobile coverage is solid. 4G or 5G from at least one operator reaches 100% of the area, and from every operator about 98%.
About 25% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official mapping treats traffic noise as significant rather than background, and the loudest band recorded here is 70 decibels. Rail noise doesn't register, with 0% of postcodes near that threshold. Check whether the house you're viewing is on one of the busier roads, and go back at rush hour to hear it.
The area has 2 public charge points with 2 connectors between them, and 0 of them are rapid. With no rapid chargers, electric car owners here need a driveway and a plan for charging.
For a typical commute, the answer is the car. If you have to be in an office most days, allow for driving and budget for two vehicles. If you're one of the home workers, the town suits you better than its transport suggests.
Battle's connectivity is below par. The broadband is decent and the mobile signal is strong, but the trains and buses are too sparse to live without a car.