Slough has been named the most miserable place to live in Britain, finishing dead last, 220th out of 220, in the UK’s biggest annual happiness survey.
The result comes from Rightmove’s Happy at Home Index, 13th edition, published in December 2024. Over 35,000 people were asked to rate their local area across 15 different happiness factors, from community spirit to local pride to the cost of living.
It’s the kind of result that writes its own jokes (yes, we all thought of The Office too), but the numbers behind it are a bit more interesting than a punchline.
Why did Slough come bottom?
Rightmove’s index doesn’t just ask “are you happy?”. It breaks happiness down into practical, everyday factors including pride in the area, sense of belonging, community spirit, local shops and amenities, and cost of living.
Slough scored poorly across a lot of them, dragging it to the very bottom of the whole 220-place table.
Residents and local coverage have pointed to familiar frustrations: a high street that’s struggled to bounce back, limited green space compared with its neighbours, and a general feeling that the town gets overlooked. It sits in the shadow of Windsor just down the road, within easy reach of London, and locals have long said it never quite gets the investment or the identity that its bigger, glossier neighbours enjoy.
None of that is unique to Slough. Plenty of towns share some of these frustrations.
What made the difference here is that Slough scored badly across nearly every factor at once, rather than being let down by just one or two, and that combination was enough to put it in a league of its own for last place.
Slough isn't alone down there
Rightmove hasn’t published a full ranked bottom 10 for this edition, so there’s no official league table of misery below Slough. What we do know is that several other places landed in the same lowest tier for happiness:
- Bradford
- Barking and Dagenham
- Dudley
- Croydon
It’s a reminder that this isn’t really a story about one unlucky town. It’s a spread of places, from outer London boroughs to Midlands and Yorkshire towns, all wrestling with similar pressures around amenities, cost of living and a sense of local pride.
What’s striking is how different these places are on paper. Croydon and Barking and Dagenham sit inside Greater London with all the transport links that implies.
Bradford and Dudley are Northern and Midlands towns with very different housing markets and job prospects. Happiness, it turns out, doesn’t care much about a place’s size, location or postcode prestige.
What about that 'winter blues' survey?
You may also have seen headlines naming Norwich as Britain’s most miserable spot. That’s a separate piece of research entirely: a British Gas survey from February 2026 measuring “winter blues” among a 2,000-person national sample, not local happiness across the year.
It’s a different question, a different survey and a different sample size, so treat it as a snapshot of seasonal mood rather than a rival to the Rightmove index.
Here's the real sting: misery isn't cheap
This is the bit that should raise an eyebrow. Despite finishing bottom of the entire happiness table, the average asking price for a home in Slough was £411,820 at the time of the survey.
That’s not a typo. You could be paying a genuine premium to live somewhere that scores dead last for how happy residents actually feel there.
It’s a useful reminder that a postcode’s price tag and its quality of life don’t always move together. Proximity to London, decent transport links and strong local employment can all push prices up regardless of how residents rate their day-to-day happiness.
A commuter town within easy reach of Heathrow and central London will always carry a premium, whatever the mood on the ground.
Before you let a price tag do the talking when you’re house-hunting, it’s worth actually visiting an area at different times of day, or at least digging into surveys like this one, to get a feel for what living there is really like day to day.
Happier towns further up the Rightmove index, some with far more modest asking prices, are proof that you don’t have to overpay to end up somewhere people genuinely enjoy calling home.
Location, transport links and jobs matter, but so does whether the people already living there are actually glad to be.
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Disclaimer: Content on this page is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before making a financially related decision.
