East Dunbartonshire in Scotland named Best Place in Great Britain for women to live in 2017

At the other end of the spectrum, the analysis of all 380 British Local Authorities conducted by National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) for Woman’s Hour, found that the London borough of Islington is the worst place for women to live, followed by Blackpool (second) and Corby (third).

To compile the list NatCen analysed a broad variety of indicators related to women’s quality of life to form a core index, which covers eight areas: income, housing affordability, personal wellbeing, safety, education, life expectance, environment and culture. This index was used to rank all 380 British Local Authorities (LA) from a ‘best’ to ‘worst’ list, based on existing data in Great Britain. A series of age-specific measures were also used to identify the best place to be a younger (18-30), middle (30-65) and older woman (65+).

Karen Dalziel, Woman’s Hour Editor says: “The Best Place to be a Woman analysis has given us a powerful tool to understand the factors affecting the quality of a woman’s life in Great Britain, and a fascinating insight into the way a woman’s needs, experiences and expectations change during her life. But how important are low house prices, good schools and availability of jobs? Can access to green fields or cinemas compensate for high crime rates? Or is having family and friends nearby what women value most? We’ll now investigate to what extent our selected key indicators have really shaped women’s choices about where they live.”

SW

Core results

LAs in Scotland (East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire), the South East (West Oxfordshire, West Berkshire, South Oxfordshire, Winchester, Mid Sussex and Wycombe) and the West Midlands (Stafford and Shropshire) dominate the top 10 overall best places to live; whereas the LAs in the top 10 worst list were spread across England, populated by London boroughs (Islington, City of London, Westminster and Camden), the North of England (Blackpool, Kingston upon Hull and Burnley) and the Midlands (Corby, Boston and Wolverhampton).

Young (under 30)

For women under 30, the top ranked LA was West Oxfordshire, in South East of England with low unemployment rates and scoring well on safety, culture, personal well-being and education. At the other end of the scale for young women, Kingston upon Hull ranked in as the lowest LA, with high rates of unemployment, as well as performing poorly on environment quality, life expectancy and safety. However, Hull scored very well on housing affordability, whereas West Oxfordshire scored poorly on that index, suggesting that whilst quality of life may be high there might be substantial financial barriers to young women living there.

Middle (30-65 years)

East Dunbartonshire was also the highest ranking LA for middle aged women (30-65), scoring high on school quality (2nd overall), a key indicator for this group, it also ranked well on employment opportunities and local demographics. By contrast Nottingham ranked lowly on all those three key indicators placing at the bottom of the list for middle aged women to live.

Older (over 65)

South Oxfordshire ranked the highest LA for women in the over 65 age group, excelling on the two age-group specific indicators of mortality rate and proportion of women over 65 living alone. Conversely the London borough of Islington ranked lowest for older women, rating poorly across the age specific indicators as well as several of the core indicators.

Best place - East Dunbartonshire, Scotland

Topping the list, East Dunbartonshire scored well across a range of core domains. It scored 11th in on education, with 75% of residents reporting NVQ3 level qualifications or higher and 59% reporting NVQ4 level qualifications or higher. The LA ranked 16th overall in the quality of the local environment, with the LA ranking in the top 50 in its PM10 concentration, SO2 concentration and access to green space. East Dunbartonshire ranked 40th on overall personal wellbeing, placing it 35th in life satisfaction and 42nd in happiness. The borough also ranked 46th in terms of income, with the median hourly wage among women equalling £15.07 per hour (ranking 41st).

Despite its high levels of education, environmental quality, wellbeing and income, East Dunbartonshire did not excel in every domain. With median house prices costing 7.5 times the local median income, it ranked 192nd out of 380 in housing affordability. It also ranked 159th on life expectancy at birth, with an average life expectancy of 83.5 years among women in the area.

Worst place - Islington, London

At the end of the list Islington performed near the bottom of the distribution on wellbeing, environmental quality, housing affordability and safety. Scoring 379th out of 380 on personal wellbeing overall, residents of Islington reported among the lowest levels of happiness (371st) life satisfaction (372nd) and feelings that their life is worthwhile (379th). They also reported among the highest levels of anxiety (367th).

The borough also ranked second to last on the environmental quality domain, with particularly high concentrations of NO2 and PM10 (ranking 377th and 378th) and limited access to green space (ranking 358th). Housing in Islington was among the least affordable in Britain, with the median house priced at over 16 times the local median income. Islington was ranked 369th out of 380 in crime, with 122 reported offences per 1,000 people.

Islington ranked near the middle of the distribution on income and life expectancy. Although it ranked 16th in Great Britain on women’s full-time wages (£16.35 per hour), a large gender wage gap (men’s median income is 17% higher than women’s) bumped the LAs domain ranking to 105th. Islington ranked 205th in terms of life expectancy, with women’s average life expectancy birth 83.1 years.

Islington scored in the top 100 LAs on two indicators: access to culture and entertainment and education. It ranked 84th overall on culture, with over two in five residents reporting having gone to a museum (42%) or the cinema (40%) in the past year and around one in three reporting have been to an art exhibition (36%) or a public library (31%). It also ranked 20th in the education domain with 70% of residents reporting NVQ3 or higher and 58% reporting NVQ4 or higher.