It’s official: Croydon is one of the most miserable places to live in London.
Cheer up Croydon: the London happiness map, from last week’s Evening Standard
Well, when we say “official”, we actually mean that the Evening Boris says so. But they did get their source statistics from the Office for National Statistics, so there might be a grain of truth in it all.
The capital’s evening paper reported last week that Croydon is the fifth least happy place to be of London’s 32 boroughs, with Greenwich and our neighbours to the north, Lambeth, being the chief miserablists.
Perhaps Croydon needs one of its most famous sons, Captain Sensible, to do some more of his “Happy Talk”.
Apparently, Redbridge was ranked the happiest borough to live in, followed by Richmond-upon-Thames and Newham.
The paper reported: “The data provides a half-decade picture of Britain’s changing well-being levels for the first time and lays bare parts of the country which are the happiest, most miserable, anxious or have the highest and lowest levels of life satisfaction.”
One passage of the newspaper report, about the ONS’s figures for the nation as a whole, might be seen as encapsulating some of the tensions in Croydon’s north-south divide: “Figures showed those living in rural areas feel most satisfied with life while people in London report the highest levels of anxiety.”
The newspaper’s website also offered infographics to illustrate some of the findings.
For happiness, Croydon rates 7.24/10.
For anxiety, Croydon is 3.12/10, with neighbouring Sutton rated among the highest London boroughs, on 3.59.
For the feeling of being worthwhile, Croydon residents rated 7.45/10.
As a whole, London ranked lower than the rest of the country for satisfaction and finding their lives worthwhile. But it’s even grimmer up north: Chorley in Lancashire returned the lowest levels of overall happiness with an average of 7.00/10.
“This will help individuals, communities and local authorities to look at well-being locally alongside other traditional measures of progress,” the report quoted an ONS official as saying.
Cue Gavin Barwell and Mario Creatura rolling out one of their Tory online campaigns, asking Croydon residents to rate their happiness levels before the 2018 local elections, in an effort to prove we’re more miserable now…
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