When and where were you happiest? I’m not thinking here about your bolt hole in Spain or on the coast of Greece – with on tap sunshine – but back in dear old Britain, where most of us spend most of our time.
This is something that we at Ipsos MORI Towers have been considering for the last few months.
What stands out from our latest analysis is unsurprising, but also rather alarming. The biggest issue, by far, is how worried residents are about anti-social behaviour.
Tony Blair might have been unpopular by the time he left office, but his obsession with the ‘Respect’ agenda was well founded. It accounts for about one-third of overall resident satisfaction.
Next up are housing, planning and education, which collectively seem to have only as much impact on how people feel about where they live as basic streetscene services and good parks.
Feeling the area is cohesive matters, too – a real challenge for neighbourhoods which are more diverse. It’s interesting to see these same factors played out in the latest study of the world’s most liveable cities – nowhere in Britain makes the top 25.
Income matters most. Richer people are always happier than poorer ones in most societies, even though, overall, societies become no happier in aggregate as they get richer. But changing that can take a generation – doing something about ASB can be much faster – and local government can still work much more effectively with the criminal justice system on this.
We are still more cheerful than many sunnier places in Europe, however, and the ‘place survey’ that all English councils will be undertaking this autumn will let us look in more detail than ever at what matters most.
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