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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the levels of loneliness and social isolation in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last three years; and what (i) financial and (ii) other steps her Department is taking to tackle loneliness and social isolation in those areas.

DCMS collects data on levels of loneliness in England through its annual Community Life Survey, which suggests that prevalence of loneliness has remained similar to pre-COVID levels, with 6% of adults reporting that they are always or often lonely. Secondary analysis of this data suggests that young adults (aged 16-34) are five times as likely to be lonely compared to people aged 65+ whilst people that experienced mental distress were four times as likely to be lonely than those who did not.

The Department does not routinely collect data on loneliness in local areas. However, DCMS works closely with experts such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to monitor other data sources and build our understanding. In 2021, ONS published the first estimates of loneliness at a local authority level, which suggests 11% of adults over 16 in Coventry feel lonely often or always. However, as the ONS report states, because of small sample sizes and large confidence intervals, local authorities should not be ranked against each other. Unfortunately we don’t have the data available to estimate loneliness levels at a regional or constituency level.

The Government continues to take action to tackle loneliness through public communications to reduce the stigma about loneliness, building the evidence base on loneliness and supporting other government departments and external organisations to consider loneliness in their work.

Copies of the first, second and third annual reports on the government's work on tackling loneliness are available in the Libraries of the House and online.