People in England are living longer than ever, according to new figures. Men can expect to live about 80 years on average and women nearly 84, based on provisional data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) analyzed by the King's Fund, a health think tank (The Guardian). But those extra years of life are not being shared evenly.

London saw life expectancy rise by nearly a year over the past decade. The south-east, south-west, and east of England also saw gains. But five regions in the north and Midlands — the north-west, north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands, and East Midlands — barely moved. People in London can now expect to live three years longer than people in the north-east.

That gap lines up with patterns of poverty. In the poorest 30% of areas in England, life expectancy either fell or stayed flat over the past decade. In the wealthiest 30%, it rose by half a year. Think of it like a widening staircase: the top steps are rising while the bottom ones stay put.

At the local level, the differences are even starker. In Blackpool, men live about 10 years less and women about 8 years less than in Hart, a district in Hampshire. The King's Fund has pointed out that even when you compare areas with similar levels of poverty, northern areas still tend to have lower life expectancy than southern ones (The King's Fund). Living in the north carries a health cost that goes beyond money alone.

These numbers come from the ONS Single Year Life Tables, a dataset that tracks how long people are expected to live based on deaths and population in a given year. It covers the whole UK and has records going back to 1980. The 2025 figures are provisional, meaning they could be revised.

There is another measure that matters even more: healthy life expectancy. That means the number of years people live in good health. This fell in every region of England over the past decade. On average, people now spend about 2.5 years longer in poor health than before. The gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas can reach 20 years. Living longer but spending more of that time in poor health raises real problems for the NHS, social care, and people's ability to work — and those problems hit hardest in the regions least able to cope.

The UK government's 10-year NHS plan promises to raise healthy life expectancy for everyone and to halve the gap between rich and poor. The King's Fund called that halving goal "unrealistic." Their reasoning is straightforward: healthy life expectancy has been going in the wrong direction across all regions, and the gap has not been shrinking. Aiming to reverse a decade-long decline while also closing a gap that has held firm for years goes beyond what the evidence currently supports.

Veena Raleigh, a senior fellow at the King's Fund, discussed the findings in the context of health inequality and whether the government's targets are achievable. The King's Fund has been tracking these patterns for years. Its earlier work found the south-east had the highest life expectancy and the north-east the lowest, with a three-year gap. The 2026 figures confirm that pattern rather than change it.

The broader picture is that three things are happening at once: the national numbers look like progress, the regional breakdown tells a different story, and the measure of how long people stay healthy is going backward everywhere. The tools people usually point to — redesigning NHS services, prevention programs, fixing social care — are working against a backdrop where the basic drivers of health have been pulling apart for at least a decade.

In the end, England's longevity story is really two stories. The south is seeing real, if modest, gains. The north and Midlands are stuck, and in the poorest communities, things are getting worse. The record-high national number hides how unevenly those extra years are being shared.