Richest one per cent will live over eight years longer on average than those living in poorest parts of UK by 2030, say experts

The difference in UK life expectancy now equals that of much poorer countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Nicaragua

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People living in the some of the country’s richest areas will, by 2030, live more than eight years longer on average than those living in some of the poorest, leading experts have said.

Warning of a “grand divergence in health and longevity”, public health researchers forecast that England and Wales’s ‘life expectancy gap’ will grow over the next 15 years – partly as a consequence of Government cuts to welfare, and the budget squeeze on the NHS.

By 2030, those living in the one per cent of local authority areas with the highest life expectancies will live on average 8.3 years longer than people living in the bottom one per cent.

In 2012, the life expectancy gap between the top and bottom one per cent was 6.1 years for men, and 5.6 years for women.

Life expectancy is, and will remain, highest in rich parts of London and the south of England, and lowest in urban northern England, including Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester, and southern Wales, according to the new projections, published in The Lancet.

Despite an upward trend in the average life expectancy for England and Wales, which is projected to reach 85.7 years for men and 87.6 years for women by 2030, inequalities between rich and poor will continue to grow, and the gap may widen faster than before, the predictions suggest.

The Coalition’s austerity cuts will “at best, cause the rising inequality trends to continue, and could well worsen them because their adverse effects are particularly large on children, working age people and disadvantaged social groups and communities”, the study said.

“Tight budgets” for the NHS and “an expanding role for the private sector in commissioning and provision of health services” could also have an impact.

A drop in smoking rates, better diets and better medical care lie behind the long-term uplift in life expectancy, said the study’s senior author, Professor Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London.

However, the gap between the rich and poor has grown in the past three decades, with many researchers linking high unemployment and growing inequality in the late 1970s and 1980s with long-term damage to the health of some communities, particularly in the country’s old industrial regions.

Professor Ezzati said that social trends of the past five years could lead to further entrenching of inequality.

“We are already seeing signs of rising poverty and that is inevitably going to have quite large effects,” he told The Independent. “If people are cutting their children’s school meals, deciding between eating and heating their homes and their job is not secure, and at the same time the NHS is going to be squeezed, if services are provided by private companies, those aspects are going to get worse.”

The predictions were made based on life expectancy data on 375 of England and Wales’ 376 local authority districts, dating from 1981 to 2012, revealing the huge variations that underlie the countries’ average life expectancy.

For example, the difference between the longest-lived local authority area – the City of London – and some of the poorest, was the same as the difference between the UK average life expectancy, and that of much poorer countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Nicaragua.

Labour’s public health spokeswoman Luciana Berger said the findings were a “damning reflection” on the Coalition’s policies, which she said had hit “the most disadvantaged members of our communities hardest”.

A Conservative spokesman said that child poverty had come down under the Coalition and pledged continued investment in the health service.

“A strong NHS needs a strong economy and Ed Miliband propped up by the SNP would put that at risk,” the spokesperson said.