This English city is the ‘most depressed’ place in the UK, apparently

Humans are simple creatures, really. Give us warmth and loads of bright sunshine, we’re happy. Give us grey, wet weather and a few hours of natural light a day and we become fairly miserable. Unfortunately, the UK is the midst of the gloomiest time of year right now and it looks like the winter blues are getting to lots of us. 

In a new survey carried out by British Gas, 42 percent of Brits admitted to feeling more depressed in January than during any other month of the year. Half also said that they feel more irritable at the start of the year. But which city feels the most depressed of all during the winter months? Norwich, apparently.

Yep, according to British Gas, Norwich is UK’s ‘most depressed’ city this time of year. Of the Norwich residents that took part in the survey, 25 percent said they feel genuinely depressed from mid to late January thanks to rubbish weather and lack of daylight. A total of 57 percent of Norwich-based respondents said that they’re currently craving sunlight and warmth. 

The people of Swansea and Stoke-on-Trent came in joint second place with 24 percent reporting seasonal depression. Manchester took third place with 21 percent while Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford shared fourth place with 16 percent. 

As miserable as that sounds, it’s best to take the numbers with a pinch of salt. British Gas only surveyed a total of 2,000 Brits for its research (for comparison, Norwich has a population of 150,000). A separate report by the Office of National Statistics last May concluded that the north east of England is the most miserable place in the country while another recent one by Rightmove revealed that the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham is the UK’s least happy neighbourhood. 

Winter blues season is almost over, though. In less than two months’ time, the sun will finally start setting after 7pm. Read more about when the clocks will go forward in the UK here. 

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