The sunniest places in the UK, ranked by sunshine hours
The sunniest of the Met Office’s long-running weather stations is Eastbourne in East Sussex, which averaged about 1,890 hours of sunshine a year between 1991 and 2020. The least sunny, Lerwick in Shetland, averaged about 1,100. The south and east coasts of England do best, and the north and west of Scotland get the least.
The ranking
| Rank | Station | Hours of sunshine a year | Sunniest month | Hours in December |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eastbourne, East Sussex | 1889 | July (252) | 62 |
| 2 | Manston, Kent | 1793 | July (236) | 59 |
| 3 | Hurn, Bournemouth Airport, Dorset | 1690 | July (221) | 59 |
| 4 | Whitby, North Yorkshire | 1625 | May (212) | 56 |
| 5 | Oxford, Oxfordshire | 1615 | July (212) | 57 |
| 6 | Camborne, Cornwall | 1612 | May (208) | 54 |
| 7 | Heathrow, London | 1597 | July (206) | 53 |
| 8 | Valley, Anglesey | 1575 | May (219) | 46 |
| 9 | Waddington, Lincolnshire | 1570 | May (203) | 60 |
| 10 | Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire | 1570 | July (209) | 47 |
| 11 | Aberporth, Ceredigion | 1554 | May (210) | 49 |
| 12 | Yeovilton, Somerset | 1524 | July (192) | 52 |
| 13 | Leuchars, Fife | 1498 | May (198) | 52 |
| 14 | Sheffield, South Yorkshire | 1469 | July (194) | 47 |
| 15 | Tiree, Inner Hebrides | 1423 | May (224) | 33 |
| 16 | Shawbury, Shropshire | 1392 | May (181) | 48 |
| 17 | Bradford, West Yorkshire | 1319 | May (173) | 38 |
| 18 | Armagh, County Armagh | 1281 | May (180) | 43 |
| 19 | Stornoway, Isle of Lewis | 1174 | May (193) | 26 |
| 20 | Eskdalemuir, Dumfries and Galloway | 1107 | May (162) | 37 |
| 21 | Lerwick, Shetland | 1103 | May (182) | 20 |
What the numbers show
- The south coast wins. Eastbourne and Hurn, near Bournemouth, are both in the top three, with Manston in east Kent between them.
- December is the dullest month everywhere. Every station on the list has its lowest total in December. Lerwick averages 20 hours in the whole month.
- May beats July in the north and west. At most stations in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern England, May is the sunniest month of the year. July is sunniest in the south and east of England.
- The gap is large. Eastbourne gets about 70% more sunshine in a year than Lerwick.
How this was calculated
The figures come from the Met Office’s historic station data, which gives monthly sunshine totals for 37 stations. For each station we averaged each calendar month over 1991 to 2020 and added the twelve averages together. Stations missing more than six years of sunshine data for any month in that period were left out, which leaves 21.
Three limits are worth knowing:
- This is not every sunny town. The list only covers stations in that dataset. Well-known sunny spots without a station in it, such as parts of the Isle of Wight and the Sussex coast west of Eastbourne, are not ranked here.
- Two kinds of instrument are mixed. Some stations switched from a Campbell-Stokes recorder to an automatic sensor during the period. The two do not read identically, so small differences between neighbouring ranks should not be read as meaningful.
- These are our calculations, not official climate averages. The Met Office publishes its own 30-year averages, and its figures for a station may differ from ours.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Averages tell you where. A forecast tells you when.
A yearly average says how much sun a place gets. It does not say whether the sun will be out at two o’clock this Saturday. Even Lerwick has bright afternoons, and even Eastbourne has grey weeks.
Sunny Hours shows the sunny hours for wherever you are, for the next 10 days.
Last updated 8 October 2026.