'People here want to be lifted': Hampshire district is happiest place in the UK

'People here want to be lifted': Hampshire district is happiest place in the UK

“If you can show me one person in Aldershot who’s happy, I’ll give you a free haircut,” promised Giovanni Gomma, a barber, in the centre of the Hampshire district that has been declared the happiest in the UK.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hairdresser Giovanni Gomma sits on a barber chair inside his Aldershot salon. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Gomma, 61, who has run his Gomma’s Haircare salon on Station Road for 45 years, said the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – which revealed its findings on Wednesday – must have got its calculations wrong “or maybe the whole country isn’t very happy”.

“If you walk around, you’ll see that this isn’t a very happy town, it’s a dying town,” said Gomma, who moved to Aldershot from Rome in 1973. “All the shops are shut, everyone shops online at Amazon, the atmosphere has gone.”

Gomma’s personal analysis of the town’s contentment conflicts with the ONS’s annual happiness study, which assesses factors ranging from health to crime levels, anxiety and wellbeing. It found that the residents of the borough of Rushmoor – which includes the Hampshire towns of Aldershot and Farnborough – were the happiest in the country and also have the highest “feelings that the things done in life are worthwhile”.

The 95,800 residents of Rushmoor were also, according to the ONS survey, the second-least anxious in the UK after Newry, Mourne and Down in the south-east of Northern Ireland.

Rushmoor residents had average happiness levels ranked at 8.35 out of 10, compared with 7.7 for Britons on average – and much higher than the 6.7 recorded in Fenland in Cambridgeshire, which came bottom out of more than 400 local authority areas.

Despite the gloom in Gomma’s empty salon, it did not take too long to find a happy Aldershot resident. Harka Gurung, a cashier at the amusement arcade next door, was “very, very happy to be Aldershot”. Gurung, 55, was part of the town’s large population of former Gurkhas and their families who settled in the town after retiring from the military.

Gurung, who served in the army for 15 years, lived in the Aldershot garrison north of the town for three years before retiring to a small house with his wife in its large ex-Gurkha area nicknamed “Little Nepal”.

“It’s a very nice life here in Aldershot,” Gurung said. “Most of the Gurkhas who leave the army stay here and many other Nepalese come here because of the community. My friends and family are happy, despite my wife’s sickness but the healthcare is very good.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harka Gurung, a cashier in one of the amusement arcades in Aldershot. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Gurung, who has two grown up children (one serving with UK forces in Estonia and one in college), said the people of Aldershot may be happier because housing was more affordable than in other nearby towns in Hampshire and Surrey.

More than 6,100 people living in Rushmoor at the time of the 2011 census were Nepalese – the highest of all of the local authority areas and the borough accounts for more than 10% of all Nepalese people in the UK. .

Ken Muschamp, a Conservative councillor who is the deputy leader of Rushmoor borough council, said the sudden increase in the Nepalese population – after a 2008 court ruling gave Gurkhas who retired before 1997 and their descendants the right to settle in the UK – had once put a strain on public services. But he added that the ex-Gurkhas were an “important and vibrant part of our multicultural community”.

‘It was heartbreaking’: can a town survive when its M&S closes? Read more

Muschamp, 61, said he was “delighted and not totally surprised” to learn that his electorate were the most content in the UK. “We as a council have tried to do a lot to revitalise the area, which was hard hit when the army reduced the number of troops in Aldershot,” he said. “It hit businesses, there was suddenly a lot less troops with their disposable incomes.”

A fair number of shops on Aldershot’s main streets have been boarded up – reflecting many small towns across the country. It lost its Woolworths in 2008 and Mark & Spencer quit the town in 2015. On Wellington Street – the focus of the council’s regeneration scheme – Poundworld closed this summer when the budget retailer went bust.

Muschamp said: “We [the council] have made it our business to get involved and do what we can to help the town.

“I think people have seen that we are listening and investing £500m over 10 years to improve lives. Who would have thought the people of Rushmoor were worth half-a-billion? But they definitely are.

“The people here want to get involved, they want to be lifted. They have pride in their community, and we want them to be able to have even more pride.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ken Muschamp, the deputy leader of Rushmoor council. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Muschamp said he was “very happy to live in Rushmoor.” But he added: “If I have happiness issues it’s with living in the UK. I am very pro-remain in a very pro-Brexit council in one of the highest Brexit-voting constituencies in the south of England.” Rushmoor residents voted 58.2% Leave in the 2016 referendum.

He said happiness could be lifted by “lower housing costs, and lower costs of living”, compared with surrounding areas.

Muschamp said the borough also had some very high-paying jobs, particularly in Farnborough, which has developed an industrial park around Farnborough airport. BMW has its UK headquarters in the town, and Time Inc, the publisher of Marie Claire, NME and a dozen other magazines, has moved 300 jobs to the town’s business park.