Social housing tenants in Oxford have a worse quality of life than other city residents, a new survey claims, writes Victoria Owen.

People living in council property and the unemployed are more prone to bad health - but find it difficult to access health care. They are also more likely to suffer from neighbourhood problems compared to professionals living in Oxford.

Low income earners and the jobless take more illegal drugs and drink more alcohol than others, it was revealed. The findings emerged in the latest survey involving Oxford's Talkback Panel which included questions about health improvement. The panel, made up of a broad spectrum of 1,000 city residents, was founded by the city council in partnership with Oxfordshire Health Authority, Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council.

It showed that while a third of professionals found they had to wait for NHS treatment, the problem affected more than half of the low earners and unemployed.

All the higher earners were in good health, while a fifth of the unemployed revealed that they were suffering from illnesses.

They also endured the most neighbourhood problems. While 21 per cent of professionals had noisy neighbours, the same problem affected 43 per cent of those lower down the social scale. City council democratic services officer Nicola Lloyd said: "This is not different from the national trend and all our research will be presented to the council's health and environment committee next week.

"Councillors will then talk about some sort of action plan, although the city can't act alone to resolve these problems. We will talk with the other partners involved in the Talkback Panel and we have already produced a Health Improvement Plan in conjunction with the health authority."

Story date: Friday 11 February

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.