The happiest and unhappiest places to live in the UK

How happy is your area of the UK?

The ONS regularly release headline estimates of personal wellbeing, derived from survey data about the average score between 0 and 10 across four different criteria.

These include:

• Life satisfaction
• How worthwhile the things you do in your life are 
• Happiness
• Anxiety

The top score of 8.39 for happiness in 2015/16 went to Mid and East Antrim, with 8.39, followed by North Kevesten (8.31) and Mid Ulster (8.28).

Of the top ten, three areas were from Northern Ireland, two were in Scotland, and five were in England.

The bottom 16 scores for happiness all went to English places:

Matthew Steel from the Office for National Statistics, said:

At a time when economic measures are generally improving, this is not necessarily reflected in how people tell us they are feeling about their lives.

Whilst it is too early to say why anxiety ratings have increased slightly and why life satisfaction, happiness and worthwhile ratings have levelled off in the past 12 months, we know from our previous research that factors impacting most on people’s personal well-being include health, work situation and relationship status.

Publishing this data quarterly, rather than annually, means we can monitor these trends more closely.

Good old, unhappy Albion.

More: The happiest places in the UK, mapped