To give you some insight, we have created uSwitch's Best Places to Live in The UK Quality of Life Index – a way of ranking the 138 regions of the UK based on an overall quality of life score derived from a range of recent, official statistics relating to all kinds of things that have an impact on your standard of living.
These range from incomes and cost of living to other things like classroom sizes, mobile phone network coverage and the average broadband internet speeds available locally.
Norfolk in the East of England is one of the regions in our research that performed significantly worse using 2015 data than it did the last time we did uSwitch's Best Places to Live in The UK Quality of Life Index back in 2013 – it has fallen 29 places in our rankings of the best places to live from 76th to 105th out of 138 statistical regions used in the study.
Here are some of the stats that were used for Norfolk:
Employment
When it comes to overall employment rates, Norfolk's statistics are pretty good (though nothing exceptional) with 74% of the population in employment.
It has a higher than average percentage of people overworking, however, with 25% working more than 45 hours per week – considered an indicator of poor work life balance and therefore lesser quality of life.
Income
Incomes in Norfolk were fairly average for the UK in 2015. The average 2015 gross weekly income per person was £454.91. Disposable income in Norfolk is not bad, at £16,366.67 per annum for a household.
House Prices
House prices in Norfolk are moderately high for the UK as a whole, and also high by East Midlands of England standards. The cost of the average house in 2015 was £173,857.14.
Life Expectancy
The life expectancy from birth in Norfolk is higher than average for the UK as a whole for both males and females, at 84 for women and 80 for men.
Life expectancy is an influential factor that insurance companies use to determine life insurance premiums. You can check our advice guide on how to get a cheaper life insurance policy
Living Costs
The cost of living in Norfolk is above average for the UK and very high for the East Midlands with a weekly grocery shop for a Norfolk household costing £60 – the same as in both the East and West regions of inner London.
Other Important Factors
Norfolk performs extremely poorly for mobile phone signal at 69% of the region. This is probably due to the amount of this region's area that can be classed as rural. Norfolk also has pretty low broadband speeds of 17Mbps on average.
Due to some negatives like high cost of living and poor technology Norfolk is in the bottom portion of our table for UK quality of life despite its positives like reasonable employment rates and moderate house prices.
More to life than rankings
At uSwitch, we know that there is more to life than rankings, stats and figures, and our Qualify of Life Index merely highlights the vast differences in the experiences of people across the UK.
Whether you're living in the best city or the worst, millions of households in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland face financial struggles including rising energy bills and credit card debt. That's why it's more important than ever for households to assess their budgets, and uSwitch.com offers a great way to start.
Below you can find ways to save on everything from car insurance to mobile bills.
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Place to Live 2015 — Where did your region rank?
About the research
The uSwitch.com study assessed 138 local areas (NUTS3 regions) for 26 factors such as salaries, disposable household income, and the cost of essential goods including food bills, fuel costs and energy bills. The study also factored in lifestyle issues like hours of sunshine, working hours and life expectancy to ensure a full picture of the quality of life in each NUTS3 region.
For more about the study's methodology, read the full press release .