The 19 best UK cities to live and work in revealed

Ranking criteria included employment, health, housing affordability and commuting times

Reading is officially the best city to live and work in the UK (Google Maps )

Reading is officially the best city to live and work in the UK, according to new research.

Oxford, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Aberdeen also scored highly, making the top five, but its bad news for Londoners, with the capital ranking in the bottom 10.

The 2015 Good Growth for Cities Index, from business consultants PwC and think-tank Demos, has ranked UK cities against 10 categories measuring economic performance and quality of life.

Criteria included employment, health, income and skills, in addition to housing affordability, commuting times and environmental factors.

The five highest performing cities have remained unchanged from last year’s report, while some cities improved significantly, most notably Newcastle and Durham, Bradford and Cardiff, where large employment gains and improvements to transport and health care have seen the cities move up the ranks.

Despite claiming top spot on the PwC’s Cities of Opportunity report, the capital, with its high-wage jobs and strong financial sector, ranks low on the list.

The report cites factors such as London’s lack of affordable housing, transport congestion and long working hours as downsides, which offset the capital’s benefits.

The Northern Powerhouse, a proposal to boost economic growth in the North of England by the Conservative and coalition governments, played a predominant role in the report, which hopes to create a score for the region to be used to assess the success of moves to devolve powers.

Edinburgh ranked in the top five cities (Google Maps)

The overall score of the Northern Powerhouse came just short of the UK average, where higher than average scores for work-life balance, housing affordability and income distribution where outweighed by a lower performance for income and health.

The study also bolstered the argument for decentralisation with cities in devolved administrations such as Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Wales scoring above the UK average.

“Economic success is not just about growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross Value Added (GVA), but also needs to reflect broader measures of wellbeing including jobs, income, health, skills, work-life balance, affordable housing, transport and the environment,” said the report.

19 Highest ranked cities for growth:

1. Reading & Bracknell

2. Oxford

3. Edinburgh

4. Cambridge

5. Aberdeen

6. Southampton

7. Bristol

8. Belfast

9. Leicester

10. Coventry

11. Portsmouth

12. Preston

13. Norwich

14. Swindon

15. Milton Keynes & Aylesbury

16. Plymouth

17. Cardiff

18. Brighton

19. Stoke-on-Trent

19 worst ranked cities for growth:

1. Wakefield & Castleford

2. Middlesbrough & Stockton

3. London (Boroughs Only)

4. Sunderland

5. Liverpool

6. Bradford

7. Birmingham

8. London

9. Swansea Bay

10. Maidstone & North Kent

11. Hull

12. Southend & Brentwood

13. Newcastle & Durham

14. Sheffield & Rotherham

15. Manchester

16. Glasgow

17. Wirral & Ellesmere Port

18. Warrington & Wigan

19. Nottingham