People living in the UK’s poorest areas are spending fewer years in good health than they were  a decade ago, a new report has found.

In England, the ‘health gap’ between the richest and most impoverished 10% of the population has grown to 19.4 years for men and 20.3 years for women.

The vast majority of areas in the UK have seen a significant fall in ‘healthy life expectancy’ – the amount of time someone lives free of illness or disability – since 2012. The metric gives a more accurate measure of a nation’s health than simply looking at lifespans, researchers said.

The area with the highest healthy life expectancy in England was Richmond upon Thames, in southwest London, at 69.3 years for men and 70.3 years for women in 2022–24.

The lowest healthy life expectancy for men was in Blackpool, at 50.9 years, and for women in Hartlepool, at 51.2 years.

Healthy life expectancy in the UK fell by an average of around two years, to 60.7 years for men and 60.9 years for women, with Northern Ireland showing a less sharp decline than England, Scotland and Wales.

The report blamed “successive governments” for failing to take the necessary action. “The message from our analysis is unequivocal – the UK’s health is declining and falling behind most other comparable nations,” the authors wrote.

Improving the nation’s health should be “on a par with delivering economic growth as a core objective of government policy,” they added.

Tom Midlane is a freelance journalist.

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