The town with the best quality of life in the UK

The latest PwC Good Growth Index has named Reading the best place to live in the UK. Find out why I agree.

Reading is the best place to live in the UK, according to a new report.

The Good Growth for Cities Index put together by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for think tank Demos has placed Reading top, while London was named among the worst.

In total 39 cities, with 250,000 residents or more, were analysed against ten factors including jobs, health, skills, housing, transport, income, work-life balance and the environment.

Rather than focusing on traditional measures to understand economic wellbeing the report looks at 'good growth' factors the public consider important to their quality of life.

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Best and worst places to live

The report found that Reading & Bracknell was the top place for quality of life followed by Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Southampton and Cambridge.

Reading & Bracknell scored well for its high levels of employment, excellent transport links and affordable housing. Second place Aberdeen no doubt benefited from the offshore oil boom, which has boosted jobs and pay.

Middlesbrough & Stockton was found to be the worst place for overall wellbeing, followed by Wakefield & Castleford, London, Newcastle & Durham and Swansea Bay.

London featured close to the bottom despite having the highest level of incomes in the country as other issues like sky-high house prices, congested roads and longer working hours dragged its score down.

The areas which scored badly tended to have lower incomes as well as tough labour markets, poor health, residents stuck in rental accommodation and poor transport links.

Other big cities like Liverpool and Birmingham also fared badly.

John Hawksworth, chief UK economist at PwC, said the report shows there is a 'rising price for economic success' which means big cities like London come in lower than expected based on traditional measures, while medium-sized cities like Reading (technically a town) are ticking all the right boxes for what the public says is important to them.

While there have been encouraging signs of a pickup in the UK economy, there is some way to go before the recovery becomes sustainable. PwC argues that cities and towns like Reading have a key role to play in this drive to maintain long-term growth.

The Government seems to agree, as cities will be able to take more control over their areas through City Deals from next year.

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Why Reading is top for me

There are plenty of reports regularly proclaiming one place better than another, but this one stood out for me. That's because I made the move from London to Reading last year.

Affordable housing was the main driver for my boyfriend and I, and we were able to get a two-bedroom terraced house in pretty good nick for under £170,000. Getting a similar property where my family live in South East London would have cost over seven times more.

I still work in the capital though and commute every day. Getting to London takes 25 to 30 minutes on the train and there are plenty of them which run out of the brand new station. But Reading isn’t only good for getting to London. It has excellent transport links with routes North, South, East and West as well as the M4 motorway.

As I still work in London I can’t vouch for what the jobs market is like. But it’s well known that Reading has attracted a fair few big technology companies like Microsoft and Oracle to the area. And according to the Centre for Cities, which publishes a Cities Outlook each year, Reading has consistently been among the areas that have seen the strongest recovery since the recession.

But apart from affordable housing, good employment prospects and excellent transport links, which the report picks up on, there’s lots of other things to like about Reading.

It's a diverse university town that has plenty of restaurants and shops to enjoy.The annual Reading Festival attracts thousands of music fans and great acts from around the world each summer.  And though the main town centre is very urban you don’t have to travel far to find a bit of countryside to enjoy.

What do you think? Is the quality of life index right? Are Reading, Aberdeen and Edinburgh the best places to live in the UK?

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