Fermanagh and Omagh ‘happiest places in UK’

The proportion reporting very high personal well-being is growing faster than the proportion reporting low levels is falling.

They said they were 8.3 after being asked: “Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?”

Apparently people living in Fermanagh and Omagh rated themselves the happiest on a scale of zero to 10. “Where 0 is “not at all happy” and 10 is “completely happy”.

The new national well-being figures showed that while Fermangagh and Omagh is the happiest place to live, Bolsover in Derbyshire scored the lowest in terms of happiness, worthiness and life satisfaction categories.

West Somerset came top when people living in the area were asked: “To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”

North-west England had the highest average year-on-year improvements for life satisfaction, happiness and the feeling that life was worthwhile, which the ONS speculated could have been down to talk in Westminster of turning the region into a “northern powerhouse”. But it clarified that the rise was a result of people reporting the highest levels of wellbeing rather than a reduction in the number of people reporting the lowest levels, recommending that ministers address the “growing inequality” in personal wellbeing.

Figure showed people in Northern Ireland gave higher average ratings for personal well-being for all measures except anxiety compared to the other three regions in Britain, and this has been the case in every year since data were first collected.

ONS said that Wales was the only region that did not have any significant positive improvements between the financial year ending 2014, comparing with England, Scotland and NI.