Seeking a life of happiness? Move to the Western Isles
IT is one of the most remote parts of the UK, where the weather can be windswept to say the least.
But the Outer Hebrides has now emerged as the happiest place to live in Britain, according to the latest Government survey on wellbeing released yesterday.
The Western Isles scored highest on average when people were asked how happy they were, with residents of the isles rating their average happiness as 8.24 out of ten in the past year.
It means that the isles have now overtaken Fermanagh and Omagh in Northern Ireland as the happiest area of the country over the past year.
Stand-out features of the locale are its dazzling coastlines with stretches of white sands, including Traigh Iar beach on Harris, Garry Beach on Tolsta and Luskentyre Sands on South Harris.
The area is also renowned for the luxury wool fabric Harris Tweed which has been hand-woven on the island for centuries.
And on Lewis, the Callanish Standing Stones draw visitors from all over the world to see the ancient structure.
Yet strangely, out of the four nations within the UK, Scotland turned out to be marginally the least happy on average, with only a 7.43 rating out of ten.
Dundee and Falkirk were the main areas bringing Scotland’s overall average rating down as they both scored only 7.19 out of ten.
Meanwhile the biggest cities in Scotland – Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow – achieved scores of 7.39, 7.41 and 7.22 out of ten respectively.
Across the United Kingdom, East Northamptonshire ranked as the least happy place in the country, with a 7.01 rating, while Hammersmith and Fulham were revealed to be the most anxious, with a 3.68 rating out of ten.
Residents of the Orkney Islands were found to be the least anxious with only 1.85 on average feeling anxious the day before participating in the survey.
For the United Kingdom as a whole, average ratings across the four measures of personal wellbeing in the financial year ending 2016 were: 7.7 out of ten for life satisfaction, 7.8 out of ten for feeling that what you do in life is worthwhile, 7.5 out of ten for happiness yesterday and 2.9 out of ten for anxiety levels.
Personal wellbeing has improved every year since the financial year ending 2012 but the financial year ending 2016 sees the first instance where there has not been an annual improvement across all of the measures.
Average ratings of feeling that things done in life are worthwhile, and of happiness and anxiety in the UK, have not improved when comparing the financial years ending 2015 and 2016, but all have increased since the financial year ending 2012.
People in Northern Ireland continue to give higher average ratings of personal well-being for all measures except anxiety, when compared with the other UK countries.
Although women reported higher life satisfaction and worthwhile levels when compared with men, they also reported higher levels of anxiety.
Dawn Snape, the quality of life officer at the Office for National Statistics, said: ‘We have seen personal wellbeing improving on a UK-wide basis over the past five years, but today’s data paints a richer picture, enabling people to explore what’s been happening in their local area.
‘This will help individuals, communities and local authorities to look at well-being locally alongside other traditional measures of progress.’