UK Wellbeing Conditions Index 2026
Mental Health First Aid Course
https://www.mentalhealthfirstaidcourse.co.uk/blog/most-and-least-happiest-areas-to-live-in-england
Availability checked 16 October 2026

357 of 361 UK council areas included.
This is an original publisher index of selected wellbeing conditions, not a direct survey of happiness or an official government ranking.

PURPOSE
An original publisher analysis of selected conditions associated with wellbeing, not a direct survey of happiness, clinical assessment, causal model or government-endorsed index.

GEOGRAPHY
Non-overlapping UK local authority districts on the common official current boundary basis. Never include counties alongside their constituent districts. Match by official codes; do not substitute name matches or simple averages over boundary changes.

PERIOD_RULE
Latest published comparable local-authority release available at review. Each measure uses one consistent period and definition across all four nations. Release dates are not observation dates. Prefer ready official population-weighted local pollution over a newer unaggregated model requiring an unvalidated spatial reconstruction.

NORMALISATION
For each input in the complete eligible sample: 100*(average ascending rank - 1)/(N - 1). Reverse the PM2.5 score. Equal raw values receive average ranks. The transformation ranks relative position, not proportional differences in raw values.

COMBINATION
Average the transformed inputs within each domain using declared input weights; average the four domain scores with equal 25% weights. These weights are editorial choices, not estimated contributions to happiness.

ELIGIBILITY
All six raw measures required. Exclude missing, suppressed or explicitly unreliable values (including source reliability CV greater than 20% where available). Retain moderately uncertain published estimates with their flags and available uncertainty. No imputation, zero-filling or weights redistributed around missing data. Publish all exclusions and reasons. Check any source-specific flag meaning before applying.

RANKING
Descending full-precision composite. Exact ties share competition rank. Display score to one decimal; displayed ties can have different unrounded ranks. Country ranks are subsets of the same UK scores, never re-standardised separately.

SENSITIVITY
Report per-area rank ranges over eight alternative domain-weight scenarios: independently halve or increase one domain's base weight by 50%, then renormalise all weights to sum to one. Additionally compare a raw min-max transformation and four leave-one-domain-out scenarios, separately. These are methodological sensitivity ranges, not confidence intervals.

INTERPRETATION
A higher index score indicates a more favourable combination of these selected measures. It does not establish that residents are happier, that moving would improve wellbeing, or that adjacent ranks are statistically distinguishable. Does not measure housing affordability, crime, relationships, healthcare access or every dimension of wellbeing.

HISTORICAL
Preserve July2024 England results as an explicitly separate archived method. Do not calculate trends against the new UK method.

INPUTS AND WEIGHTS
Health 25%: male and female life expectancy percentiles equally.
Economy 25%: workplace full-time gross hourly median pay including overtime and employment rate 16–64 percentiles equally.
Environment 25%: reversed population-weighted total PM2.5 percentile.
Connectivity 25%: residential gigabit availability percentile.
Workplace pay is pay for jobs located in the area, including commuters, not residents’ earnings or affordability.

PERIODS AND RELEASES
Male and female life expectancy at birth: 2022–2024; 10 December 2025. Latest published comparable UK local-area period verified at review. Three years are pooled to improve stability; this is period life expectancy, not healthy life expectancy.
Full-time employee median gross hourly pay, workplace basis: Pay period including 30 April 2025, provisional; 23 October 2025. Latest common annual ASHE reference period verified at review. Workplace pay describes jobs located in the area, including commuters, rather than resident household income.
Employment rate, ages 16–64: January–December 2025; GB: 21 April 2026; NI: 30 July 2026. Latest common annual district period across all four nations. GB alone has April 2025–March 2026; mixing that with NI calendar 2025 would compare different periods.
Population-weighted annual mean total PM2.5: 2024; Not specified in the local-authority source. Latest ready-made UK council population-weighted series listed. New 2025 modelled grids were released 9 October 2026, but require separate population/boundary aggregation and use a changed model.
Gigabit broadband availability at residential premises: January 2026; 13 May 2026. Latest published observed UK coverage snapshot verified. Availability is distinct from take-up and planned deployment.
Reported happiness, separate national context: January–March 2026; 28 August 2026. Latest quarterly non-seasonally adjusted UK and four-nation estimates at review; next release scheduled November 2026. Not an input to the local conditions index.

QUALITY
All six raw inputs are required. Missing or suppressed figures, source-explicit unreliable estimates and unharmonised boundary changes are excluded without imputation. Published ASHE pay with CV above 20% is excluded; accepted values can still be uncertain. Nine published workplace-pay estimates have CV above 10% and at most 20%, flagged in the download. Employment intervals are approximate 95% intervals where Nomis supplies them. NISRA does not publish district intervals in its table; all selected NI employment cells are unshaded. Life-expectancy intervals are retained. Close index ranks are not demonstrated to differ statistically, and methodological sensitivity ranges are not confidence intervals.

EXCLUDED AREAS
Isles of Scilly (E06000053): male life expectancy not published for this district; female life expectancy not published for this district; employment: Missing or source-suppressed employment rate; pay: missing, suppressed or unpublished median; pay: coefficient of variation unavailable for quality screening; pay: source flags estimate as unreliable or suppressed
Barnsley (E08000038): employment: No matching employment estimate for the 2025 boundary; predecessor was not substituted; PM2.5: predecessor boundary is not harmonised to this current district
Sheffield (E08000039): employment: No matching employment estimate for the 2025 boundary; predecessor was not substituted; PM2.5: predecessor boundary is not harmonised to this current district
City of London (E09000001): male life expectancy not published for this district; female life expectancy not published for this district; employment: Missing or source-suppressed employment rate

REPRODUCTION
Unzip the reproducibility download. With Python 3, run: python calculate_index.py
The standard library is sufficient. It reads inputs.csv, preserving all 361 areas and declared exclusions, then calculates the eligible-area rankings and sensitivity checks. Scores in the output CSV retain calculation precision.

SOURCES
ONS: local-authority district to country lookup, April 2025
https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/d2e57023-a60c-4ce5-aaee-fca379d45310/local-authority-district-to-country-april-2025-lookup-in-the-uk1

ONS: local-area life expectancy, 2022–2024
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/datasets/lifeexpectancyforlocalareasoftheuk

ONS/Nomis: Annual Population Survey employment rates
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/datasets/apsnew

NISRA: local-government-district annual employment tables, 2025
https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/labour-force-survey-tables-local-government-districts-2009-2025

ONS: Annual Population Survey quality update, September 2026
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/annualpopulationsurveyqualityupdateseptember2026

Nomis: approximate confidence intervals and small-sample publication rules
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/articles/news/files/APS_publication_rules.pdf

Defra: population-weighted local-authority PM2.5 data
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/data/pcm-data

Defra: 2024 local-authority PM2.5 CSV
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/datastore/pcm/popwmpm252024byUKlocalauthority.csv

Defra: newer 2025 modelled grids, a different data product
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-quality-compliance-assessment-2025-modelled-data-and-reports

Ofcom: Connected Nations update, Spring 2026
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/coverage-and-speeds/connected-nations-update-spring-2026

Ofcom: fixed-broadband coverage methodology
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/multi-sector/infrastructure-research/connected-nations-spring-2026/about-this-data-fixed-broadband-coverage-and-full-fibre-take-up-2026.pdf?v=422757

ONS: quarterly personal wellbeing, non-seasonally adjusted
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/datasets/quarterlypersonalwellbeingestimatesnonseasonallyadjusted

ONS: quarterly personal-wellbeing quality tables
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/datasets/qualityofinformationforquarterlypersonalwellbeingestimates

ONS: Barnsley boundary change
https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/areas/E08000038-barnsley

ONS: Sheffield boundary change
https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/areas/E08000039-sheffield

NISRA: workplace ASHE, 2025 provisional
https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/ni-geographies-place-work-and-place-residence

ONS: workplace ASHE, 2025 provisional
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/placeofworkbylocalauthorityashetable7
