These are officially the best – and worst – places to live in the UK

Edinburgh is the flower of Scotland but Blackpool isn’t brilliant (allegedly)

The results are in: Edinburgh and Sollihull are officially the best place to live in the UK, while Devon, Blackpool and Bradford are languishing near the bottom of the list.


Researchers looked at factors including life expectancy, crime rate, housing cost, hours of sunshine, salaries, schools and broadband speed to come up with their list of 138 regions of the UK.

Here are the top 10:

Edinburgh, Scotland
Solihull, West Midlands
Hertfordshire, East of England
Northumberland, North East
South Lanarkshire, South Western Scotland
Berkshire, South East
Darlington, North East
North Lanarkshire, Scotland
York, Yorkshire and Humber
Inverclyde, Scotland

…And the bottom 10:

South Teesside
East of Northern Ireland
Central Valleys, Wales (including Merthyr Tydful and Rhymney)
Devon
Blackpool
West and South of Northern Ireland
Eilean Siar (Western Isles)
North of Northern Ireland
Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire
Bradford, Yorkshire

Utilities comparison site uSwitch came up with the annual Quality of Life Index, with Scotland’s capital moving into top place this year beating last year’s champion Sollihull.

Bradford and Hull didn’t do so well, penalised for low disposable income, low employment, high rent and crowded schools.

And beautiful Devon is a surprise entry on the flops. Too many cream teas?

Yeah Devon…who’d want to live there?

Manchester, Southampton, Leicester, Cardiff, London, Swansea and Birmingham were all somewhere around the middle, so if that’s where you are don’t worry, it’s not quite time to pack up and move to Scotland – but you should probably keep an eye on the situation.

Here’s the whole list, showing the position change from the year before.

Metro