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Winchester named best place to live in Britain

Xinhua, December 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

A city in Hampshire famed for its cathedral was named Saturday as the best place to live in Britain.

England's southeast dominates the Halifax bank's 2016 list for the best 50 places to live, with Winchester in number one spot.

It was found to have the best quality of life in Britain, scoring high on health, life expectancy and weather, with a low level of crime rates. Winchester also has, according to the study, an above average number of pubs and the residents are among the happiest in Britain.

Hundreds of kilometers away, the Orkney Island off the north coast of Scotland, was in second place and Wychavon in the West Midlands area of England came third.

The Halifax bank survey also shows that residents of the exclusive London borough of Kensington and Chelsea earn the highest average wage at 1,273 pounds(1,590 U.S. dollars) per week, followed by the City of London at 1,106 pounds per week. Those levels of salary compare to an average for the country as a whole of 646 pounds a week.

Winchester's residents earn an average weekly wage of 824 pounds, 27 percent higher than the average in Britain.

Almost 97 percent of residents of the city report being in good or fairly good health compared with a national average of 94.6 pecent and life expectancy is also higher than the national average. Men could expect to live to around 82, and women to 85. Crime rates in Winchester are also among the lowest in the country.

The government's Office for National Statistics have also reported that adults in Winchester are among the happiest, most satisfied, most content and least anxious in Britain.

Scotland's remote Orkney Islands, which climbed 83 places in the chart between last year and 2016 won second place for its low crime rates, low amounts of traffic and low population densities.

In fourth place was the scenic Derbyshire Dales, famed for its stunning landscape, while Hambleton in northern England was fifth.

Martin Ellis, economist at Halifax, said: 'Looking across a wide range of indicators considered by our research, residents of Winchester in Hampshire enjoy the best quality of life in the UK, benefiting from a combination of above average weekly earnings, low crime rate and good health."

"On the other hand, there is a cost associated with a high quality of life with house prices in Winchester 9.7 times the average annual local income -- significantly higher than the UK average of 7.2."

The following places also made into the top-10 best places to live in Britain: South Cambridgeshire, Purbeck in Dorset, the city of St Albans, Wokingham in Berkshire, and Chiltern in Buckinghamshire.

Despite coming 183rd in the list, Mid and East Antrim in Northern Ireland have Britain's highest levels of life satisfaction, happiness and feeling that their life is worthwhile. Endit