South West best for retirees, but pick wisely

With 700 miles of coast, several National Parks and abundant cream teas, the South West has an understandable reputation as a retirement idyll.

But research has suggested large differences between the quality of life for pensioners who retire to the region, with Devon and Dorset far more appealing than Cornwall and Somerset.

The study compared crime levels, predicted life expectancy after the age of 65 and the availability of care in every county.

_{Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset}

Six of the top 20 counties for “pensioner well-being” were in the South West – Devon was top, Dorset second, Gloucestershire seventh and Wiltshire 12th.

Powys, Norfolk, East Sussex and Surrey completed the top five. Other regions in the South West were rated less highly by Prudential, the insurer, which used census data to recommend places for a “long, healthy and safe retirement”.

The chances of being the victim of a recorded crime – from trespass to murder – was higher in Somerset than surrounding areas, the data showed, pushing the county into 13th place.

On average, 59 crimes are committed a year per 1,000 people in Somerset, according to the latest census – the same number as in Leicestershire.

By contrast, police in Powys registered 36 crimes per 1,000 people and in Surrey the figure was 41. The national average is 56.7.

_{Cheltenham, Gloucestershire}

Cornwall was relegated to 19th among the 52 counties analysed by Prudential after it found lifespans for pensioners tended to be shorter than in other retirement hotspots.

On average, a 65-year-old man could expect to live another 19 years if residing in the southernmost tip of Britain. By comparison, male pensioners in Devon lived an extra 20 years to age 85 – comfortably above the national average of 18.8 years.

The prognosis was the same for women, who in Cornwall tended to live an extra 21.3 years after they reached 65 – the same as the national average. In Devon, the average was 22.8 – again the highest of any of the top 20 best places to retire.

Of those expecting to retire this year, Prudential found more than a third in the South West said they would be able to leave an inheritance to their families, above the UK average of 29 per cent.

_{Brecon Beacons near Brecon, Powys}

Vince Smith-Hughes, a retirement specialist at Prudential, said: “What was fascinating when we conducted this research was that while the South West is still a wonderful all-round place to retire, there were some marked differences between its different counties.

"We know pensioners tend to value low crime rates and good availability of health care workers and by feeding this data into our calculations we hope our analysis can prove useful to people considering where to spend their old age.”

Other strong-performing regions in the pensioner well-being league table included Suffolk and North Yorkshire.

Mr Smith-Hughes said one thing tied all the successful regions together: they were largely rural.