Cheer up! Britain is getting happier

But things are still beastly in Bolsover and they’re feeling down in Dover too

BRITAIN as a nation is getting happier – but just try telling that to the people of Bolsover, Dover and Liverpool.

Official figures yesterday revealed that while the UK’s overall happiness level is higher than ever, a ‘growing inequality’ means there are pockets of relative misery across the country.

The national well-being study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – backed by David Cameron and now in its fourth year – found that people are generally feeling more positive about their lives.

The average happiness rating on a scale of 0-10 across the UK was 7.5 – up on last year. The average life satisfaction and worthiness ratings were also up.

But the gap between the most and the least happy has grown over the last four years, with a significant minority being left behind.

Experts said the improvement in average well-being was being driven by people reporting the highest levels of happiness – but there was no decrease in those reporting the lowest levels.

To gauge people’s moods, the ONS quizzed 165,000 adults on four measures of well-being – happiness, life satisfaction, feeling life is worthwhile and anxiety.

Under the programme people were asked to rate their lives on a scale of nought to ten.

Those living in Fermanagh and Omagh in Northern Ireland rated themselves the happiest on this scale, with residents scoring an average of 8.26.

Bolsover in Derbyshire is perhaps the gloomiest in the UK, scoring lowest in the happiness, worthiness and life satisfaction categories.

Pendle in Lancashire is the most anxious place to live, with people rating themselves 3.6 when asked: ‘Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?’ And the remote Outer Hebrides is the best place to live for life satisfaction. It is also in the top five for happiness and worthiness. In addition, the study found that people in Northern Ireland generally rate their lives higher than any other UK country. By contrast, Wales is the only part of the UK not to see ‘significant positive improvements’ in well-being in the last year. Since the study began in 2011-12, there have been ‘small but significant improvements’ in average personal well-being ratings across the whole of the UK.

The proportion of people rating their happiness at nine or ten out of ten has grown from 31.8 per cent in 2011-12 to 34.1 per cent in 2014-15.

But the ONS found that the falls in the unhappiest people were smaller than the growth in those reporting wellbeing at the highest levels.

For example, North East and Yorkshire and The Humber were the only two English regions with no significant improvement in levels of well-being across all four of the measures.

Glenn Everett, ONS director of well-being, said: ‘Overall, people are generally rating their lives higher than they did four years ago.

‘But what is interesting is that they show a slight growth in inequality between people rating their lives highly and those reporting low levels of personal well-being.

‘ In other words, a growing inequality that policy makers need to consider.’