BRITAIN’S most unhealthy towns have been revealed – do you live in one of the areas?
Tower Hamlets in London and Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, have been named as the unhealthiest places in England and Wales.
Nearly one in 10 people living in the boroughs said they were either in “bad” or “very bad” health.
This is in contrast to the residents living in the neighbouring, affluent areas of Wokingham and Hart, where just 2.8 per cent of locals thought they were in ill health.
The stats were compiled by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), based on results from the 2021 census.
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In the census, respondents were asked to assess their overall health as being either very good, good, fair, bad or very bad.
Overall, some 47.5 per cent of people across England and Wales reported their health as being very good despite the census taking place when the UK was struggling with the Covid pandemic.
That figure was up 2.5 percentage points compared to the figure recorded in the previous census a decade ago.
The percentage of people saying they were in poor health went down.
In the 2021 just 1.3 per cent of people reported being very bad health, compared to 1.4 per cent in the previous census.
The proportion saying their health was bad, also dropped, from 4.7 per cent to 4.5 per cent.
Within those figures, though, there were some stark regional differences.
Residents in Tower Hamlets were more than three times more likely to say they were in poor health compared to those living just a few miles away in the City of London.
Brits also said they were in poor health in Blaenau Gwent, in South Wales (9.3 per cent), followed closely by Liverpool (9.2 per cent) and the neighbouring borough of Knowsley (9 per cent).
Slightly down the table were Blackpool and Manchester with 8.8 per cent saying they were in poor health.
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The North East of England was the region which reported the highest proportion of Brits who considered themselves in very poor health with 1.6 per cent of those living there.
In contrast the South East of England recorded just 0.6 per cent of its population saying they were in very bad health.
While Tower Hamlets did record the highest proportion of Brits in poor health, the figure of 9.5 per cent was an improvement compared to the 2011 census.
Then, the London borough recorded 12 per cent of residents were in ill health.
Across England, 81.7 per cent of people reported being in good health compared to 79.1 per cent of those in Wales.
At the other end of the scale, 5.1 per cent of those in England said they were in poor health, compared to 6.7 per cent in Wales.
The ONS figures though only record a person’s perception of their health and not the actual reality, which may be different.
Analysts from the ONS also noted the census was conducted during the Covid pandemic which may have altered people’s perception of their health and so affecting the results.
