For a second year running the county has been awarded the top spot of any in England and Wales, beating Dorset which came in second position, East Sussex in third, the Isle of Wight in fourth with Norfolk in fifth.
West Sussex remains best place to retire offering pensioners the highest quality of life, Prudential’s 2018 Retirement Quality of Life Index has found.
For a second year running the county has been awarded the top spot of any in England and Wales, beating Dorset which came in second position, East Sussex in third, the Isle of Wight in fourth with Norfolk in fifth.
The Isle of Wight edged Devon out of the top five for 2018, rising four places with Devon slipping to sixth.
West Sussex is the most attractive for pensioners based on indicators of happiness and comfort.
These include: resident pensioners as a proportion of county’s population– an indicator that the county has previously been an attractive location for pensioner and disability-free life expectancy– an indicator of pensioners’ ongoing health and well-being.
There’s also access to healthcare, crime levels, the number of pensions moving to the county, showing how attractive the area is to retired people, pension income, weather.
Furthermore there’s healthy lifestyle data showing how healthy the population is and happiness, an indicator of how happy on a scale of zero to 10 the population feel.
The South Coast of England dominates the top places to live in. Just three of the top 10 counties for pensioners to retire to are not in the South of England; Norfolk, Worcestershire and Shropshire, the latter of which jumped seven places from 2017’s rankings to reach the top 10.
Somerset also jumped significantly compared to last year, rising nine places to appear in 2018’s top 10. Suffolk and North Yorkshire, on the other hand, both dropped out of this year’s top 10, falling three and eight places respectively.
The county which has improved the most since 2017 was Leicestershire, jumping 14 places up to rank 32.
Retirees in Rutland have the healthiest lifestyle and are happiest, those in the West Midlands enjoy the lowest crime rates, retirees in Bedfordshire are wealthiest and those in Essex have the best weather.
