Adults living in Bristol currently have the highest quality of living in the country, according to a new report from MoneySuperMarket.
The Quality of Living Index assesses the quality of life in the UK’s 12 largest cities and how it has been impacted over the past year by recession and austerity.
MoneySuperMarket’s first Quality of Living Index assesses the 12 largest cities in the UK on a range of factors including: property market activity; rental costs; salary levels; disposable income growth; cost of living; unemployment rates and life satisfaction. These factors, taken from existing sources such as house price trackers and ONS statistics, have been weighted depending on the importance of each to the quality of living and each city given an overall score.
Bristol took the top spot. The average employee salary there is £22,293 – above the UK average of £21,473, and the third highest out of the 12 largest UK cities. It also has the highest disposable income growth and one of the lowest unemployment rates (8%), helping it top the Quality of Living Index.
In second place is Edinburgh. It has the second highest average salary of £24,628 and the lowest unemployment rate out of all cities (6.7%). This compares with an unemployment rate of 7.8% across Scotland and 11.5% in Glasgow.
the Scottish capital also came out more favourably than the UK average on other factors: weekly average cost of living is recorded as £372.10 compared to the UK average of £401.10. And Edinburgh scored 7.42 on the life satisfaction scale, above Cardiff, London and Bristol. Disposable household income growth was 2.99% which is 0.13 percentage points higher than the UK average of 2.86%.