There’s another reason to love living in the garden of England as a new study has revealed trees in Kent are better at saving lives than anywhere else in the country.

Government data by the Office of National Statistics has revealed plants in Kent top the charts for removing harmful pollution in the air.

East Kent came first as around 77 kilos of pollution was removed from the air per every rugby-pitch sized area of vegetation in 2015.

In the west and middle of the county, plants filtrated around 74 kilos of air pollutants, including dangerous fumes from car exhausts, power plants and heating.

Experts estimate nature saved the entire health service around £1 billion in 2015.

Figures by the ONS centre for Ecology and Hydrology, predicted the NHS in Kent and Medway saved roughly £24 million in avoided health damage costs.

They claim there were 7,100 fewer lung and heart-related illnesses in hospitals, 27,000 fewer lives lost and 1,900 fewer premature deaths in the UK.

While ONS data suggests plants in Kent may be particularly skilled at removing pollution, Kent county councillor Martin Whybrow (Green) believes the study found high level of pollutants removed by plants because the county is heavily polluted.

He said: “Kent is a very polluted county particularly because of the traffic that passes through as well as pollution inherited from London.

“In recent years we’ve seen a fall in the amount of breathing spaces in the county between our communitites.

“We need those green spaces for our physical and mental health, these areas help natually remove pollution in the air.

“One way to tackle this would be growing vertical garden walls with plants which are particularly good at taking the pollutants out of the air.”

The responsibility of tracking how clean our air is falls on district and borough councils with the support of KCC for issues regarding public health and transport.

To help residents keep an eye on the level of toxic chemicals in the air, the Kent & Medway Air Quality Partnership provide readings on the KentAir website.

Cllr Whybrow said: “The responsibility to track air quality is with the borough and district councils but due to cuts to their budget there has been a loss of stations compared to a number of years ago.

“While awareness of the dangers of poor air quality is on the up, measurements of the impact are in decline.

“We don’t have anything that shows the picture of what the air quality is actually like in Kent because there is a lack of detailed measurements of air quality.”