The best places are all English …claims Bank of Scotland

The joint Bank of Scotland and Halifax annual survey has found that people living in the south have higher weekly wages, own bigger houses, and live longer. It also says large parts of England are generally superior in areas including the environment, education and health.

The report ranked the top 250 local authorities to live in the UK according to a wide range of factors, including rainfall, exam scores, access to employment, life expectancy and earnings. The results showed that 28 out of the top 30 areas with the highest quality of life are in southern England.

Elmbridge in Surrey, which has higher than average weekly earnings of 1,064 and where 76 per cent own their own homes, topped the survey. And Aberdeenshire – which was the highest ranking Scottish area – was only 153rd in the UK-wide comparison.

But it is not all doom and gloom for residents north of the Border, as Scots have the least congested roads and some of the lowest burglary rates in the country.

East Renfrewshire – second in the Scottish league table – came 186th over all, while Scotland's third best place to live, East Dunbartonshire, came in at number 208 nationally. All three are in the top ten Scottish areas for weekly earnings, which range from 558 to 685, and home ownership in all three areas is above the Scottish average of 67 per cent.

Nitesh Patel, an economist at the Bank of Scotland, said that although the scores indicated that the south was "better", the results showed that there were real benefits to living up north.

He said: "Many areas in southern England score strongly in categories such as the labour and housing markets. Northern areas tend to perform well on physical environment characteristics, particularly on emissions, and lower percentages of empty homes."

Aberdeenshire scores highly on several indicators, such as health, life expectancy, employment, average earnings, school results and climate.

The results found that 93 percent of people in Aberdeenshire have good health, along with a relatively high average life expectancy of 77.5 years.

Those in full-time employment typically enjoy high incomes with weekly average earnings of 640 and almost three-quarters of residents own their own home.

Chief executive of Aberdeenshire Council, Colin Mackenzie, said: "This is an excellent verification from the Bank of Scotland that Aberdeenshire continues to provide the best quality of life in Scotland.

"The survey measures areas such as employment levels, health, housing quality and education and to be consistently topping the chart is something we should all celebrate. It's evidence that Aberdeenshire is the best place to work and live in Scotland."

In 2007 Aberdeenshire also topped the best quality of life survey, and in May 2008 it had the best quality of life among rural areas in Scotland.

The Shetland Islands was the lowest ranked Scottish area in the top 250, a surprise result for islanders who strongly disagree with the poll. Andy Steven, destination manager for Promote Shetland, said: "The people who live here know that Shetland is a fantastic place to work, live and bring up your kids."

Tavish Scott, Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland, said: "After the best summer in the whole country, I'm puzzled about the islands slipping down. Presumably if it rains for 40 days and 40 nights from now on, we'll go back up."

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "Some of the data for the survey goes back as far as the 2001 census. Across Scotland we have had higher employment and economic activity rates and lower unemployment compared to the rest of the UK for each of the 30 months since 2007."