Britain’s stark health divide has been laid bare by a ranking of 118 local authority areas – with some of the country’s most deprived communities concentrated at the unhealthy end of the table while affluent parts of southern England dominate the other end.
According to the ranking supplied to Dorset Eye, Hartlepool comes first with an overall score of 9.17, followed by Blackpool on 9.13 and North East Lincolnshire on 9.10.
Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Sandwell, Doncaster, Coventry and Nottingham complete the top ten.
At the other end of the table, Richmond upon Thames has the lowest score at 2.66, followed by West Berkshire at 3.64 and Oxford at 3.85.
The contrast is striking.
The places at the top of the table are overwhelmingly former industrial and urban communities across the North and Midlands, while many of those towards the bottom are prosperous authorities in London and the South East.
That does not mean that everyone living in a particular authority is unhealthy, nor does the table itself establish the causes behind the differences. But the geographical pattern is difficult to ignore.
It reflects a much wider and long-running problem in Britain: where people live can have a profound influence on their health and life chances.
Dorset, meanwhile, sits at number 112 out of 118, with a score of 4.57.
That places the county towards the healthier end of this particular ranking, although it is still six places above the bottom. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole performs rather differently, sitting at 61st, with a score of 7.07.
The figures therefore also demonstrate why sweeping statements about an entire region can be misleading.
Dorset and BCP are geographically close, but they occupy very different positions in the ranking.
At the very top, Hartlepool’s score of 9.17 contrasts with Richmond upon Thames’s 2.66. Blackpool scores 9.13, while West Berkshire scores 3.64.
The pattern raises a bigger question about what is often described simply as Britain’s North-South divide.
Health inequalities are not created by geography alone. They are connected to the economic and social circumstances in which people live: employment, housing, income, education, the physical environment and access to services can all influence health.
The ranking should therefore be viewed as a snapshot rather than a verdict on the people who live in these communities.
It is also important to stress a limitation of the supplied data. The original table contains eight underlying numerical measures followed by the overall score, but does not provide headings or a methodology explaining precisely what each measure represents.
That means the ranking can legitimately be reported, but the individual figures should not be given invented descriptions.
What the table does show very clearly is the extraordinary spread between local authority areas.
Manchester is fifth, Liverpool sixth and Birmingham 27th. Meanwhile, affluent London authorities including Wandsworth, Barnet and Richmond upon Thames are much further down the ranking.
And that is perhaps the most important message contained in the figures.
Britain does not have one health experience.
It has communities where people face very different social and economic circumstances and consequently very different health outcomes.
The figures should therefore prompt a much bigger debate than simply asking which places are supposedly “healthy” or “unhealthy”.
The real question is why should where somebody is born, lives and works have such a profound bearing on their chances of enjoying a long and healthy life?
Until that question is taken seriously, Britain’s health divide is unlikely to disappear.
Complete ranking
The table below reproduces the supplied dataset. The final column is the overall score used to rank the areas; the intermediate columns are retained exactly as supplied because the source material does not provide headings identifying them.
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