The data behind every Lifemap figure, free to download.

Files

Every file is generated from the dataset when the site is built, so all of them match version 26 September 2026.

• uk_la_data.csv CSV · 104 KB

  One row per council (380 rows) and one column per field (44 columns): figures for men and women with their 95% confidence intervals, the averages Lifemap shows, figures at 65, the five lifestyle measures, for England inequality within each council and its deprivation score, and for England and Wales ONS’s census-based healthy life expectancy (2019–2023), a separate measure that covers English districts too.

• uk_la_data.json JSON · 438 KB

  The dataset Lifemap’s pages are built from: the same council records, keyed by council, plus _meta with sources, periods, a note on every field, the figures for the UK, its four nations and England’s nine regions, and Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Trust lifestyle figures.

• uk_la_trends.json JSON · 671 KB

  Life expectancy at birth from 2001–2003 and healthy life expectancy at birth from 2011–2013 to 2022–2024, for every council and sex where ONS publishes them, and for the UK, its four nations and England’s nine regions (the keys beginning “_country:” and “_region:”), with 95% confidence intervals. Each point is [period, value, lower limit, upper limit], oldest first.

• uk_la_trends.csv CSV · 1.5 MB

  The council series in long form: one row per council, measure (le or hle), sex and period (21,838 rows). The UK, nation and region series are in the JSON file only.

• uk_la_data_dictionary.csv CSV · 26 KB

  The data dictionary on this page, one row per column of the council CSV.

• areas/<council>.json · areas/<council>.csv JSON, CSV · 1–5 KB each

  One council: its record from the dataset, unchanged, with provenance (JSON), or its row of the council CSV (CSV). For example Blackpool: JSON, CSV. A Northern Ireland council’s JSON also carries its trust’s lifestyle figures, labelled as the trust’s (Belfast: JSON). Each council’s page links to its own files.

Looking for a ranking rather than a file? Rankings list every measure within each nation and tier of council, and the council directory can be filtered and sorted.

How the files are laid out

• CSV files follow RFC 4180: comma-separated, one header row, CRLF line endings, UTF-8 with no byte-order mark. A value containing a comma, double quote or line break is wrapped in double quotes (council names such as “Bristol, City of”), with any quote inside doubled.
• Column order is fixed. If the dataset gains a field, it is added as a new column at the end, so scripts that read columns by position keep working. The data dictionary lists every column in order.
• An empty cell means the figure is not published for that council at that geography: for example annual healthy life expectancy (hle_male, hle_female) for the 164 English districts (ONS’s annual series covers upper-tier and single-tier councils; its census-based estimates for districts are in the hle_census columns), drinking over 14 units a week for English districts (OHID publishes it for upper-tier councils only), and lifestyle measures for the 11 Northern Ireland districts (published only for Health and Social Care Trusts). Lifemap never fills a gap with a county’s or trust’s figure. Figures withheld for a specific reason are listed, with the reason, under _meta.suppressed_cells in uk_la_data.json and in the council’s own JSON file. In JSON, the same cells are null.
• Numbers are as stored, with no rounding and no thousands separators; the decimal mark is a full stop. Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy figures, and their intervals, carry one decimal place, as ONS publishes them. OHID Fingertips supplies its values to several decimal places, and Lifemap’s pipeline rounds them: to two decimal places for England’s lifestyle measures and inequality figures, and three for deprivation scores. Scottish and Welsh survey figures are stored as recorded from their publishers’ tables.
• Joining files: slug is the key in every file (the council CSV, the JSON and the trends). area_code is the Government Statistical Service code, for joining with ONS and other official data.

Seven things to know

• Every figure is an estimate. The _lci and _uci columns are the lower and upper limits of the ONS 95% confidence interval. Where two councils’ intervals overlap, the difference between them may be down to chance. See methodology §03.
• ONS publishes by sex. le_avg, hle_avg and gap_avg are Lifemap’s averages of the figures for men and women, rounded half-up to one decimal place. They are not ONS statistics and carry no confidence interval.
• Two kinds of healthy life expectancy. hle_male and hle_female are ONS’s annual series (2022–2024), published for upper-tier and single-tier councils. hle_census_male and hle_census_female are ONS’s census-based estimates (2019–2023), published for every council in England and Wales, districts included (337 councils). They use different health data and periods, and ONS says they are not comparable: do not subtract one from the other or rank them together. See methodology §08.
• Counties and districts overlap. The 21 English counties (E10) contain the 164 English districts (E07). Do not add their figures together or rank them against each other; Lifemap’s rankings keep them apart.
• Lifestyle measures come from different surveys in each nation, with different periods, and the Welsh figures for smoking, physically active, five a day and drinking over 14 units are age-standardised while the others are crude percentages. Compare councils within a nation. Methodology §04 lists the survey and period behind each measure.
• Northern Ireland publishes adult lifestyle figures only for its five Health and Social Care Trusts. They are in _meta.ni_hsc_trust_lifestyle of the JSON, and never copied into council rows.
• These are figures for populations. They describe people living in an area on average, over three years (2022–2024 for life expectancy). They are not a forecast for any individual.

Every column, defined

Definitions follow the notes the pipeline writes into the dataset (_meta.unit_explanations), reworded where those are written for maintainers; sources and periods come from _meta; coverage is counted from the data. Also available as uk_la_data_dictionary.csv.

How to cite and reuse the data

Suggested citation for this version:

Lifemap (2026). Life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and adult lifestyle measures for UK councils [dataset], version 26 September 2026. https://lifemap.org.uk/data/

The data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0: you may copy, publish, adapt and use it, including commercially, if you acknowledge the source. Please include this attribution:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Sources: Office for National Statistics, Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

When you quote a figure, credit its original publisher as well: the Office for National Statistics for life expectancy and healthy life expectancy; the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities for England’s lifestyle measures, inequality and deprivation scores; the Scottish Government, Public Health Wales and the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) for their nations’ survey figures. The sources page lists each release.

When the data changes

The dataset version is the date a published figure last changed: 26 September 2026. The pipeline checks every source each month; the version changes only when a published figure does. Each change to the data or the site is recorded in the changelog, which you can follow as an Atom feed. Earlier versions are not kept as separate downloads; cite the version you used.