Newbury & West Berkshire slips 29 places in Quality of Life Survey.

[Administrator]

Newbury & West Berkshire slips 29 places in Quality of Life Survey.

West Berkshire (which obviously includes Newbury) has been placed at the 73rd spot of the most desirable places to live in a quality of life survey - down 29 places on last year's survey.

The annual survey, undertaken by Halifax, reviews a total of 250 local authority areas throughout the UK on a number of factors including the average size of homes, percentage of children with GCSEs and a subjective rating given by its residents on their happiness, feelings of job satisfaction and anxiety.

According to the survey, people in West Berkshire earn an average of £709 a week, while the employment rate is at 78.9 per cent.

Homes in West Berkshire are larger than the national average, with 6.0 habitable rooms compared to the 5.5 nationally, while 98.1 per cent of dwellings having central heating and a bathroom.

The West Berkshire area gets an average of 599mm of rainfall per year - and West Berkshire was also one of the healthiest districts, with 96.8 per cent of families saying they are in good health.

The average male life expectancy was found to be 80.8 years.

In terms of education, 77.0 per cent of the district's children achieved five or more A* - Cs for their GCSEs, while 42.2 per cent had gone on to do some sort of post-16 qualification.

For crime, the burglary rate per 1,000 people is 36.4 - but the lowest amount went to the Orkney Islands in Scotland, which had a rating of 1.0 per 1,000 people.

Scored out of 10, residents in West Berkshire rated their life satisfaction as 7.5, whether what they do is worthwhile at 7.8, happiness at 7.42 and anxiety at 3.0 on the scale.

But while the population density nationally is 253 people per square kilometer, in West Berkshire this is 219 - and our primary school classes also have an average size of 25.8 children, as opposed to the national average of 25.9.

West Berkshire has slipped 29 places in 2013 - last year it was placed 44th in the survey.

[quiet man]

It would be interesting to know how many places there were in total. Was it 77 out of 200 or 77 out of 78?

It's not too surprising that we drop lower down the order when we have a local council that is interested in nothing more than super-taxing honest motorists and finding ways to say no to the most reasonable of its residents requests.