THE South West of England including Dorset is the best place to live if you want a long, healthy and safe retirement, says a new survey.

A league table compiled by insurer Prudential ranking counties in England and Wales according to several measures of pensioner wellbeing found that six of the top 20 counties are in the South West of England, with Devon coming out on top and Dorset ranked second.

Dorset’s pensioners have the longest life expectancy in England and Wales – the average 65-year-old woman will live for another 23 years and a 65-year-old man another 20 years.

The pensioner wellbeing league table rates each county against a number of indicators including the ratio of healthcare workers per head of population, the length of time a pensioner can expect to live once they’ve retired, and the annual incidences of crime per thousand members of the county’s population.

Prudential’s own retirement research also recently found that the South West saw one of the largest year-on-year jumps in expected retirement incomes among this year’s retirees – with new pensioners expecting to live on 19 per cent a year more than those who retired in 2014.