With turquoise waters, white sand beaches and relaxed pace of life, it’s no surprise that the Isles of Scilly has been named the friendliest place in England.
The group of islands, which sits around 28 miles south-west of Cornwall, came top of a survey ranking all 296 local authority areas in the country, scoring a near-perfect 99 out of 100.
The survey scored each district using metrics including how often residents chat to neighbours, participation in civic life and feelings of loneliness, belonging and local pride.
Some 86.5 per cent of residents in Scilly, which has a population of just 2,300, said they were proud to live on the islands and 90 per cent said they spoke to their neighbours at least monthly. Meanwhile, only 3 per cent reported feeling lonely often.
The top five friendliest places were rounded out by South Hams in south Devon, West Devon, the Derbyshire Dales and Richmond upon Thames.
The study named Barking and Dagenham as the least friendly area in England, where 10.1 per cent of residents said they often felt lonely.
The Isles of Scilly, a group of islands about 28 miles south-west of Cornwall which has a population of 2,300 people, has been named the friendliest place in England
The study named Barking and Dagenham as the least friendly area in England, where 10.1 per cent of residents said they often felt lonely
Only 42.8 per cent said they felt proud to live in their local area, compared with the average of 59.7 per cent nationally.
The remaining areas in the bottom five were Stoke-on-Trent, Ashfield, Mansfield and Ipswich.
The study was conducted by The National Conversation, a UK-wide initiative run by the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, using government data from the Community Life Survey.
The National Conversation, run by the former Conservative home secretary Sajid Javid and the former Labour policy coordinator Jon Cruddas, aims to help better understand the country’s state of connection and cohesion to create a vision for how we can live well together.
The foreword from its first report published last year claimed that ‘communal life in Britain is under threat’ due to declining infrastructure and institutions, a loss in trust in those institutions, growing inequality and chronic neglect from policymakers.
It also identified current threats causing growing social disconnection, including the mismanagement of immigration, cost of living pressures and social media-driven extremism.
The commission warned the results show that the UK was ‘sitting on a tinderbox of disconnection and division’.
Mr Cruddas, who was the former MP for Dagenham, said: ‘I nearly choked on my cornflakes when my old area came rock bottom.
‘I think government stats miss a lot of what really makes an area tick, including my old town.
‘But that’s why we have developed it, to spark a conversation – because what we really want is your view on your area.’
