Affluent South enjoys a longer life

Women from Westminster and men from east Dorset enjoy the longest lifespans in Britain, while people from Glasgow have the shortest life expectancy, official figures showed yesterday.

Women from Westminster and men from east Dorset enjoy the longest lifespans in Britain, while people from Glasgow have the shortest life expectancy, official figures showed yesterday.

Women from parts of the south-east of England can expect to live until they are 83, more than seven years longer than women from Glasgow, where the average female lifespan is 75.7 years.

For men the gap is even wider, with men from parts of Dorset, Surrey and Cambridgeshire likely to survive until they are 78, which is 10 years more than the male life expectancy in Glasgow. The wide disparities between between the healthiest, most affluent local authorities in the South-east and more deprived councils in Scotland and the North-west were revealed in figures from National Statistics.

The Government has set a target to reduce by at least 10 per cent the gap between the health authorities with the lowest life expectancy at birth and the population as a whole.

Figures based on local authority boundaries showed that very slight progress had been made. Three years ago, the difference in life expectancy at birth between the highest and lowest figures was 10.3 years for men and 8.1 years for women. The latest data, for 2000, shows the gap for women has narrowed to 7.8 years while the gap for men remains at 10.3 years.

Women from Westminster are likely to live longest, with a life expectancy at birth of 83.5 years, followed by north Dorset at 83.4. For men, east Dorset is top, at 79 years, followed by Horsham, West Sussex, and Rutland at 78.9 years.