Harrow was the happiest north west London borough in 2021, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.
Among the questions asked as part of the survey were:
- How happy did you feel yesterday?
- To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
- How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- How anxious did you feel yesterday?
Whilst Harrow was the happiest, the borough also scored highly in how worthwhile people feel the things they do are and in life satisfaction.
As shown below, across nine north west London boroughs compared, Harrow scored within the top two of each with Camden scoring in the bottom two in each category with the categories scored out of ten.
| Happiness | Score | Worthwhile | Score | Life Satisfaction | Score | ||
| Harrow | 7.38 | Hillingdon | 7.78 | Harrow | 7.37 | ||
| Ealing | 7.32 | Harrow | 7.65 | Barnet | 7.30 | ||
| Brent | 7.28 | Ealing | 7.64 | Ealing | 7.21 | ||
| Barnet | 7.23 | Enfield | 7.62 | Haringey | 7.17 | ||
| Hillingdon | 7.20 | Barnet | 7.58 | Hillingdon | 7.10 | ||
| Haringey | 7.09 | Brent | 7.32 | Brent | 6.99 | ||
| Enfield | 6.96 | Islington | 7.32 | Islington | 6.99 | ||
| Camden | 6.93 | Camden | 7.27 | Enfield | 6.86 | ||
| Islington | 6.84 | Haringey | 7.17 | Camden | 6.78 |
All of the boroughs scored within the high threshold in the worthwhile category and in the high threshold across the board, whilst Enfield, Camden and Islington scored within the medium threshold for both happiness and life satisfaction.
Brent also scored just under the high threshold in life satisfaction, scoring 6.99 joint with Islington.
On a positive note, anxiety has come down across all nine areas since last year’s survey, the lowest score being Camden, which dropped from 7.27 in 2020 to 6.78 in 2021.
| Anxiety | Score |
| Camden | 6.78 |
| Enfield | 6.86 |
| Islington | 6.99 |
| Hillingdon | 7.10 |
| Haringey | 7.17 |
| Ealing | 7.21 |
| Brent | 7.25 |
| Barnet | 7.30 |
| Harrow | 7.37 |
Whilst all of the boroughs saw their score improve on last years, they all still scored within the high threshold (between six and ten).
Feature Image: Copyright Lewis Clarke under Creative Commons licence Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Join the discussion