Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Government’s loneliness strategy in helping to tackle loneliness.

Government is committed to understanding the impact of its activity on loneliness and will use this insight to inform future decision-making. The 60 commitments made in the loneliness strategy vary widely and so learning is captured in different ways. Many of these commitments are still in progress and findings will emerge over time. For example, an independent evaluation of the £11.5m Building Connections Fund is underway, and findings will be published from mid-2020 onwards.

The first annual report on government’s work on tackling loneliness was published on 20th January 2020. It highlighted the progress made so far, including action by frontline workers across the public sector to recognise and act on loneliness, the launch of the Let’s Talk Loneliness campaign, the commitment to include measures in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so we can understand local rates of loneliness, and the announcement of an additional £2m of grant-funding to help frontline grassroots organisations that bring people together.