The area around Leatherhead is very good, and most of it starts at the edge of town. A park or green is a couple of minutes from almost every home. The river is a short walk away. The Mole cuts through the North Downs just to the south. The town is ordinary, and the country around it is the reason to live here.
Green space is close to almost everyone. The average Leatherhead home is about 150 metres from public green space and has around 18 green spaces within a kilometre. Leatherhead Common sits on the town's own side, and Fetcham Grove, home to the leisure centre and the football club, lies between Leatherhead and Fetcham.
Water is close too. The average home is about 460 metres from a river, pond or lake, with around 26 such places within a kilometre. Fetcham across the Mole has its own mill pond and springs, with a nature reserve around them.
The Mole Gap Trail starts at Leatherhead station and runs south through Norbury Park to Dorking, and from there it is a short way to Box Hill, Westhumble and Mickleham. The National Cycle Network is further off, on average about 3.7 kilometres from a Leatherhead home, and no postcode is close to it. Walkers do better here than cyclists. The Druid's Grove at Norbury Park may have been used for pagan gatherings, so people have been walking out of Leatherhead into the woods for a long time.
Leatherhead's rating list holds 760 business premises. Offices are the largest group by some way, followed by shops and then car parks, workshops and warehouses. Those are premises on the valuation list, some of which will be empty. The rated-premises register counts 248 shops, 13 pubs and 13 restaurants, so the town is better for errands than for evenings out.
Of the 95 food premises with a hygiene rating, about 88% hold the top score of five, and 2% sit at the bottom. Eating out here is unlikely to make anyone ill, even if the choice is limited.
Fine-particle air pollution across Mole Valley averaged about 7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, a figure for the whole district.
Polesden Lacey above Great Bookham and the slopes of Box Hill give the town a wide choice of weekend walks without a long drive. The most fought-over green space nearby is the golf course at Cherkley Court, which opened in 2016 after local residents and environmental campaigners mounted a series of legal challenges against it. Even in Surrey, people will go to court to keep a hillside free of golfers.
Private gardens are reasonable for a town where flats are common. Leatherhead's homes have about 208,000 square metres of garden per 1,000 residents, and the houses in Fetcham and the Bookhams account for a large share of it.
No area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest or ancient woodland overlaps Leatherhead itself. The protected countryside is just outside the boundary, a short walk or a few minutes' drive away. That keeps the strictest planning controls off the town's own streets, while residents still get to enjoy the Downs.
The surroundings are Leatherhead's real strength. Few Surrey towns have river, commons and the North Downs this close to so many front doors.