Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many Health and Wellbeing boards have identified in their strategic plans loneliness as an issue needing to be tackled.

Health and wellbeing boards are responsible for preparing joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs) which should assess the health and care needs of the entire local population. As such, the JSNA offers a valuable opportunity for localities to review how current local services address loneliness.

The Government has not highlighted or prioritised any specific groups or area of need over another as this would risk undermining the purpose of JSNAs as being objective, comprehensive and most importantly locally-owned assessments.