CHESTER has been named as one of the best cities in the UK for vegans, according to new research.

The city's huge number of vegan-friendly restaurants helped propel it to second place in the rankings, only behind Edinburgh.

The findings come as many people may decide, literally, to turn over a new leaf this year and go vegan as part of 'veganuary'.

The research was carried out by student loyalty network Student Beans, which ranked the cities by the number of eat-in restaurants serving vegan food, the percentage of restaurants which were vegan, the number of local vegan places on Uber Eats, the average cost of vegetables and fruit and the number of health food stores in the city within a five-mile radius.

For Chester, it ranked very highly on the number of vegan-friendly restaurants, which the survey showing there were 135 in the city's limits.

The percentage of vegan-friendly restaurants, at 36.99 per cent, was also higher than Edinburgh, which topped the rankings.

However, a relatively small number were on Uber Eats, and the number of health and supplement shops was also relatively lacking, proportionally, compared to Edinburgh, denying Chester top spot.

Completing the top five were Nottingham, Newcastle and Brighton.

Surprisingly, London was ranked among the top 10 worst cities, mainly because the percentage of vegan-friendly restaurants was 20.91 per cent and the average cost of fruit and vegetables was much higher than elsewhere in the UK.

The three worst cities for vegans were Newry, Wolverhampton and Newport.