It's not grim up north: Happiness survey finds 9 out of 10 unhappiest towns are down south

The North has a reputation for being colder, rougher and a good deal grimmer than the South of the country.



But people living further north are actually far happier with where they live than their southern counterparts, a survey has shown.

Researchers looked at how more than 25,000 homeowners felt about the safety and neighbourliness of their areas and the size and condition of their properties, among 12 measurements of happiness.

Picturesque: Carlisle in Cumbria scored highest - taking the top spot on the happiest towns list

The five towns or cities that came out best were all in the North of England, with Carlisle scoring highest, followed by York, Huddersfield, Harrogate and Chester.

The only southern towns in the top ten were Norwich, Dorchester and Exeter. Llandudno in Wales and Derby in the East Midlands completed the list.

By contrast, nine of the ten lowest-scoring areas were in the South, according to the survey from property website Rightmove.

Poor score: East London was the lowest-rated area in Britain. Pictured, the historic Roman Road market

The East London area was given the lowest scores, followed by Ilford, South East London, Luton and Romford.

Oldham was the only northern town in the bottom ten of the site’s ‘Happy At Home’ Index.

Rightmove director Miles Shipside said: ‘The index attempts to measure how we feel about where we live by taking into account the relationship we have with our property, our home and our community.

'Traditional property market measures, such as price trends and transaction volumes, are both valuable and fascinating, but both fall short of treating property as a home.



'This extensive study of over 25,000 people across the UK gives an insight into how happy at home we are as a nation and which factors provide us with the most contentment.’

He added: ‘Our research provides an interesting challenge to the typical view of the North/South divide.

‘Neither Carlisle nor the North regularly features at the top of too many property market league tables. But this does not appear to be playing on the minds of those who live there too much.’

Householders were asked to score where they lived in several categories.



High house prices in the capital clearly hit the quality of life people could afford, with East London coming lowest for decor, pride and safety, while North London was bottom-ranked on space.

Carlisle came top in the decor and investment categories, and happy residents in Dorchester felt they lived in the best location for safety, recreation and neighbourliness.

People in Oldham revealed their unhappiness at a perceived lack of things to do, with their area scoring lowest for amenities and recreation.

Unlike much of the North, affordable house prices did not improve matters, with Oldham coming lowest for value too.

London did redeem itself a little with the North West of the capital coming top for value and the South West for amenities. Kingston-upon-Thames was the most popular place to live in the city.



Shopping parade on the Sholver estate in Oldham - which was the sixth unhappiest place to live in the UK

Swindon was the country's favourite in terms of cost, Durham for space and Harrogate for contentment.

At the other end of the scale, disgruntled Ilford residents rated their area worst on investment and neighbourliness, Bradford came lowest for well-being, Luton for costs and Watford for contentment.

The enlightening survey also revealed that Shrewsbury is the top-rated place to live in the West Midlands, St Albans in the South East and Chester in the North West.

Edinburgh topped the areas surveyed in Scotland, Norwich fared best in East Anglia - beating Cambridge - and Derby was the winner in the East Midlands.

How our homes score by category

All scores are based on an index where 100 is the national average on the scale of positivity. So a score of 104 = 4 index points above average

But homeowners may have reason to change their minds about where they prefer to live soon.

Employment prospects are starting to looking worse in the North, while they have actually improved slightly in the South of England.

Gerwyn Davies, Public Policy Adviser at the CIPD, said: 'Whereas employers were in "wait and see" mode three months ago, more private sector firms, particularly among private sector services firms, have decided to push the redundancy button in response to worsening economic news.



'This will exert yet more pressure on a jobs market that is buckling under the strains of contractions in economic growth and public sector employment.



'The fear is that these existing pressures, which include a widening chasm between the employment prospects of those in the north and the south, will become greater still if business conditions do not improve in the next few months.'

Happiest places to live in Britain - the full league table

