Man of Honour
That much of one. Seriously. It's a hole. I live in Stoke-on-Trent(*) and my council tax is about £700 per year with a standard single occupant discount. It's a hole, but it's a cheap hole. It reminds me of Monty Python's Four Old Yorkshiremen sketch and how everything got worse as they competed to boast about how hard their lives were. A fifth person could have walked in and proclaimed "Luxury! When I were a lad I lived in Stoke-on-Trent!"
I like it here. It's a decayed pit, but it's my home decayed pit.
The rent the OP is paying is low, even for Stoke-on-Trent, but not implausibly so even for private renting. You can rent a not bad flat in a not terrible part of the city for £300 a month. You could probably get something for less if you really wanted to. House sharing rent can go under £200 a month.
* Stoke is Stoke-upon-Trent, which is one of the parts of Stoke-on-Trent. The train station is in Stoke, a couple of miles from Stoke-on-Trent city centre, which is not called Stoke (it's called Hanley). The road system is efficiently set up to make it bordering on impossible to get anywhere, although you will frequently be able to see your desired destination as you pass by 50 metres away on your way round a kilometre of two of meandering irritation. Parking is...partially existent, to be polite, and carefully positioned to be not where you want to go. If you assume that everything in this city is designed to confuse and annoy, you won't go far wrong.
