London is one of the least welcoming cities in the UK

A new survey has ranked London as one of the least welcoming cities in the UK.

Confirming many people’s doubts about the quality of life in the capital, London has scored pretty poorly on factors such as Happiness, Friendliness, and which areas you can expect to find the most welcoming in the Provident survey.

To get the rankings, 100 local people were asked to rank their experiences out of 10. Those who took part were predominantly aged 20 to 29 (and were mainly homeowners living in a house with a partner).

It’s not all bad news though: even though London has  a reputation for being a city where people are generally unfriendly, over-worked and overstressed, London didn’t at least come bottom in any of the rankings. Indeed, places such as Cambridge, Leeds and Leicester delivered results much worse.

The most disappointing results for London came in Politeness (ranked 27th out of 30), Happiness (27th again), and Friendliness (25th).

How does this affect the university students who reside in London, though? Well, despite their academic credentials and international renown, LSE and King’s only managed to come in at 108th and 109th respectively in the most recent National Student Satisfaction Survey (out of a total of 126 universities!).

While there are obviously things students do or don’t like about how their university is run, for such top universities to score so low indicates a general unhappiness with life in London, whether you’re a home-owning couple (the focus of previous survey), or a cash-strapped university student.

King’s master’s student, Tome, summed up the general mood on London life to us: “I think King’s and London in general can be fairly unwelcoming. You have to try really hard to have a good social life because of the size of London and how expensive it is to live in the centre. People end up living really far away from each other and from uni, making it hard at times to maintain friendships and stuff.”

Fourth year student Charlotte disagreed, however. She said: “In the four years I’ve been here, I’ve always felt like King’s is a welcoming environment. In terms of London, I think a lot of it is what you make of it. It can seem big and scary at first but I’ve found it much more welcoming than other big cities I’ve spent time in.”