Birmingham men's life expectancy can plummet by a decade between two-minute train stops - see why

Shocking figures have shown life expectancy for men drops by a decade between two railway stations just minutes apart on the same line.

A report by Birmingham’s director of public health put the average life expectancy of men living near Chester Road railway station, close to Walmley and Sutton Coldfield, at 83.

But just one stop away on the Cross-City Line, an entire decade was shaved off for men living near Erdington station – a journey which takes just two minutes from Chester Road.

The life expectancy near Erdington was 73, which was also significantly lower than the England average of around 79 for men.

Continuing on the same line past Erdington and towards Birmingham city centre, the picture remains bleak.

Life expectancy for men at Aston and Duddeston was just 72 while it rose to 77 at Gravelly Hill.

But in the opposite direction past Chester Road and at stations closer to Sutton Coldfield, the figures improved dramatically.

Life expectancy at stations such as Wylde Green, Four Oaks and Sutton Coldfield itself, all also on the Cross-City line, ranged from 82 to 84.

The report, which explored changes between the 2011 and 2021 census in Birmingham, was produced by director of public health Dr Justin Varney.

At a city council cabinet meeting this week, he told councillors Birmingham’s life expectancy was “dropping faster” than the rest of the country.

“When we look at what is driving the fall in life expectancy and why we’re different, some of that is Covid,” he continued. “We were hit harder by Covid because of our underlying base position of health in the city.

“But then a lot of it is about heart disease.

“These are diseases which are preventable and driven by inactivity, smoking and diet.”

He said the city needed to focus on residents who had not heard previous messages on living an active lifestyle as well as those struggling with addiction to smoking.

“We need to get much better at our cultural competency in the way we talk to people and understand them,” he said.

“We think about things like physical activity, we talk about all adults doing 150 minutes of moderate physical activity every week.

“Moderate is a deeply white British word – most of us would struggle to articulate what is moderate, what does it mean to do 150 minutes of moderate activity?

“So we have more to do but the top headline is it is heart disease that is driving the gap in Birmingham particularly.”

Rob Pocock, the council’s cabinet member for health, pointed the finger at austerity, saying: “We can’t run from the implications of years of austerity in having had an effect which is now being seen.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said it was committed to “narrowing the gap in healthy life expectancy” by 2030 and to increasing healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035.

“Our Major Conditions Strategy will explore how we can tackle the key drivers of ill-health in England to improve healthy life expectancy, and our ambitious plans for a smokefree generation will make a significant difference, with people in more deprived areas almost twice as likely to die from smoking-related conditions,” they added.