Arun ranked as least healthy district in West Sussex and 260th overall in the UK

Meanwhile, Chichester was ranked the second healthiest town in the UK, beaten only by the Forest of Dean.

Babylon Health surveyed more than 38,000 users of its Healthcheck app across the UK.

The survey looked at three aspects of health – diet, smoking and exercise – and assigned an overall score out of 100 to each district in the UK.

The nine metrics used to calculate the score were as follows:

- Diet: alcohol units per week; drinking (times per week); fruit and veg portions per day

- Smoking: cigarettes per day; percentage of smokers; percentage of quitters versus smokers

- Exercise: moderate exercise (minutes per week); intense exercise (minutes per week); resistance exercise (days per week)

The areas with the healthiest lifestyle in the UK are Forest of Dean (74.5 points), Chichester (74.1 points) and Brentwood (71.8 points) out of 308 local authority districts, the survey found.

Chichester did particularly well on the proportion of quitters to smokers (68 per cent), coming in seventh place in the UK, fruit and veg consumption (3.3 portions per day) and resistance exercise (1.5 times per week).

Eight of the top ten districts were in the south of England.

Arun is the least healthy district in West Sussex according to the survey, ranking 260th overall in the UK (50.1 points).

Arun has a much higher proportion of smokers than Chichester (34 per cent of adults smoke).

It also has a much lower percentage of smokers who have now quit (36 per cent).

Arun residents also exercise less than Chichester residents (110 minutes of moderate exercise and 21 minutes of intense exercise per week).

At a regional level, the south east is the UK’s second healthiest region (59.4 points), beaten only by Greater London (61.8 points), the survey found.

You can explore Babylon’s research by going to https://www.babylonhealth.com/c/healthiest-habits/#overall/