Hull is the home of caravan manufacturing and fish auctions; Surrey’s Epsom & Ewell hosts the Derby and was the first spa town in England. Hull is the home of caravan manufacturing and fish auctions; Surrey’s Epsom & Ewell hosts the Derby and was the first spa town in England.

Last month they were voted by Channel 4 as the worst and best places to live in the UK respectively. Unsurprisingly, Hullensians are angry: one resident wrote to the Hull Daily Post, to say: ‘Don’t despair, the offending programme was put together by two southerners. Put it this way – twice I have lived in the South and twice I have come back to live in Hull.’ The Epsom Guardian ran with the headline: ‘We’re the tops’. So here are the facts: you decide…

Battleground 1: Housing

Hull: This is Bransholme in north Hull, Europe’s biggest housing estate with 35,000 people. It is speckled with 1960s maisonettes, and its newest landmarks include a Comet electronics shop and a Wilkinson store. The estate is covered by the Gateway pathfinder, a £50m government project to regenerate parts of Hull and the East Riding.

Battleground 1: Housing

Epsom: This is Long Grove psychiatric hospital in Epsom, which has been transformed into flats by Bluestone. It is typically upmarket, and suits the locals because it doesn’t encroach on their green belt. Plans to turn school playing fields into a 72-home estate made local headlines in the summer and have been referred to education secretary Ruth Kelly.

Battleground 2: The town centres

Hull: Being a backwater can be a saving grace for a historic city centre such as Hull. Wartime bombing and a juggernaut-friendly arterial roads may have left ugly marks, but the mandatory shopping centre slots neatly into an abandoned dock, leaving a network of historic streets and the former Dock Office, now a maritime heritage museum (pictured).

Battleground 2: The town centres

Epsom: High on the North Downs, Epsom is the paradigm of a leafy, well-heeled Home Counties suburb. Winding streets of stout, artsy-craftsy inter-war villas in lush gardens set the scene. At its centre, a cluster of neo-georgian shops and building society branches offers a limp handshake compared with a fine upstanding Victorian clocktower.

Battleground 3: Landmarks

Hull: A wave, an iceberg and a heavily eroded cliff face, all rolled into one. This is Hull’s one and only landmark building – and a pretty jaw-dropping one at that. It is The Deep, Britain’s most glorified aquarium, a no-holds-barred Terry Farrell creation that projects out from the shoreline to the North Sea.

Battleground 3: Landmarks

Epsom: Historic home of flatcapped Cockney punters and the Derby, Epsom Downs racecourse is about to be graced with a new grandstand designed by Limbrick Architecture and Design. It is an upmarket affair aimed at today’s well-heeled crowds, but wouldn’t its scatty roofline be more suitable for viewing steeplechases than flat races?

Battleground 4: Local MPs

Hull: John Prescott is Hull’s notoriously bruising MP and the government’s leading voice on housing and regeneration. He introduced the £40bn sustainable communities plan to meet the demand for new housing – however, the Council for the Protection of Rural England has warned that it could result in 240,000 homes being constructed on the green belt.

Battleground 4: Local MPs

Epsom: Cambridge-educated Chris Grayling is a member of the shadow cabinet. He was opposed to the sale of 114 disused NHS sites to the HBOS/Miller Group consortium in 2003, a deal that eventually collapsed. He said at the time: “My main fear is that the land between Epsom and Clarendon Park will be filled in with merging housing estates.”