Healthy years and total years, council by council.

Summary

Lifemap is an independent public-data project that shows how life expectancy and healthy life expectancy vary across the UK's 380 council areas. It is built from official statistics published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) and the devolved governments. Anyone can enter a postcode, or pick a council, to see how many years people there live on average, how many of those years are lived in good health, and how the area compares with the rest of the country. The figures describe populations, never individuals. There are no adverts, sign-ups or tracking cookies.

Key findings

1. Healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK is 60.7 years for men and 60.9 for women (ONS, 2022–2024). With life expectancy at 79.2 and 83.0 years, men can expect to spend 18.5 years in poorer health on average, and women 22.1.
2. Across the 216 councils ONS publishes it for, healthy life expectancy ranges by 22.0 years for men and 24.0 for women: men from 50.9 in Blackpool to 72.9 in the Orkney Islands; women from 50.1 in Merthyr Tydfil to 74.1 in the Orkney Islands. Life expectancy across the same councils ranges by 9.1 and 8.4 years. Figures for small councils have wide confidence intervals.
3. In England, healthy life expectancy differs by 19.5 years for men and 20.3 for women between the most and least deprived tenths of neighbourhoods (49.8 against 69.2 for men; 48.2 against 68.5 for women; ONS, 2022–2024). The differences are ONS’s published figures, calculated before rounding.
4. The lowest male life expectancy of any UK council is 73.7 years, in Blackpool, 5.5 years below the UK figure. The lowest female life expectancy is 78.7 years, in Glasgow City, 4.3 years below the UK figure (ONS, 2022–2024).
5. The share of adults who smoke ranges from 3.2% in Woking to 20.8% in Boston across English councils, against 10.9% for England (Annual Population Survey, 2022–24; survey estimates with wide margins of error for small councils).

Quote

"Most people know that life expectancy varies across the UK. Fewer know that the gap in years lived in good health is wider still. Lifemap puts the official figures for every council in one place, so anyone can look up their own area and see how it compares." — Lifemap founder

Cleared for direct use in print, broadcast and online coverage.

How the figures are made

• Life expectancy is from ONS, Life expectancy for local areas of the UK (latest period 2022–2024), for all 380 councils including English districts.
• Healthy life expectancy is from ONS, Healthy life expectancy, UK (latest period 2022–2024, released 19 February 2026), for the 216 upper-tier and single-tier councils. This annual series does not cover the 164 English districts; their pages show the county’s annual figure, labelled as the county’s, and ONS’s separate census-based estimate for the district, which is not comparable with the annual series.
• By sex. ONS publishes figures separately for men and women. Where Lifemap shows one figure, it is the mean of the two, and "years in poorer health" is life expectancy minus healthy life expectancy.
• Uncertainty. Each council figure is an estimate with a 95% confidence interval, which ONS publishes and the Lifemap dataset includes. Intervals for healthy life expectancy are wide, especially for councils with small populations, so councils close together in value may not really differ. Two figures whose intervals overlap should not be reported as different.
• Lifestyle measures come from different surveys in each nation, with different periods (table below). Northern Ireland's are published only for its 5 Health and Social Care Trusts and are shown as trust figures, never as council figures.

Coverage

England’s 164 districts have no annual healthy life expectancy or drinking figure of their own (their pages show the county’s, labelled as the county’s, and ONS’s separate census-based healthy life expectancy for the district); Northern Ireland’s lifestyle figures are published for trusts only.

Sources

• ONS, Life expectancy for local areas of the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/datasets/lifeexpectancyforlocalareasoftheuk/between2001to2003and2022to2024/lifeexpectancylocalareas.xlsx
• ONS, Healthy life expectancy, UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/datasets/healthstatelifeexpectancyallagesuk/current/healthylifeexpectancyuk.xlsx
• ONS, Healthy life expectancy by national area deprivation, England (released 15 April 2026): https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthinequalities/datasets/healthylifeexpectancybynationalareadeprivationenglandtimeseries
• OHID Fingertips (England lifestyle measures): https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/
• Scottish Government: Scottish Surveys Core Questions and Scottish Health Survey. Public Health Wales: Public Health Outcomes Framework. Welsh Government: National Survey for Wales. Department of Health (Northern Ireland): Health Survey Northern Ireland.
• Every source URL, with status: https://lifemap.org.uk/sources/. Method: https://lifemap.org.uk/methodology/. Downloads (CSV and JSON), data dictionary and citation: https://lifemap.org.uk/data/.

Attribution

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

Lifestyle figures for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: Scottish Government, Public Health Wales, Welsh Government, Department of Health (Northern Ireland). Boundaries: ONS Open Geography Portal; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Please link to lifemap.org.uk in online use.

Contact

Press enquiries and corrections: press@lifemap.org.uk. We aim to reply within 24 hours on UK working days.