Is our city centre unhealthy?

After being labelled among the most unhealthy people in the country, our city centre is now apparently considered a health hazard.

National charity the Royal Society for Public Health has ranked 70 towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales by the impact of their high streets on the public health and wellbeing, both physical and mental.

The rankings were drawn up by looking at the kinds of businesses in each city centre and allocating a score according to their positive – or negative – effect, from +7 for leisure centres to -4 for high cost credit outlets.

The league table, which features in the new RSPH report, ‘Health on the High Street: Running on empty,’ ranksSunderlandasthefifth worst in the country, behind Grimsby in bottom place, then Walsall, Blackpool and Stoke. Northampton, Bolton, Wolverhampton, Huddersfield and Bradford make up the rest of the bottom ten.

And the RSPH says the average life expectancy for people living in areas with the top 10 healthiest high streets is two and a half years longer than for those in the 10 unhealthiest ranked areas.

The findings have been met with some scepticism by Coun Stuart Porthouse, Sunderland City Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration, who said: “I’ve visited other big cities recently and I do genuinely think they are worse than ours for litter and I do wonder about the evidence and methodology for these surveys.”

Meanwhile Sunderland Business Improvement District’s (Bid) Sharon Appleby said the organisation was already striving to address some of the concerns in the report.

We agree that Sunderland city centre, like many others, has its problems but there have been great efforts made to improve the retail and social experience on offer in recent years and we’re sure they will continue.