Reading the findings from a year-long research project that set out to explore levels of social cohesion across Britain, “This Place Matters” can be a depressing experience.
Yet the picture that the report paints is not new. We are all aware that the sense of joyous community that the country shared during the 2012 Olympics has long since dissipated, that many communities in urban Britain feel abandoned, housing and infrastructure left to deteriorate, meeting places like pubs and clubs closed down by the twin hammerblows of austerity and Covid.
Social connection is the glue
Surprisingly, the average social connection score across the South East of -5 per cent is lower than the national average of -2 per cent, although there are wide variations between constituencies (more of this later). Luke Tryl, Director of More in Common, one of the organisations taking part in the research, believes that social connection is the glue that binds us together and helps to create strong communities, thriving economies and supportive neighbourhoods.
“Too many communities have much lower than average feelings of connection”, he says. “The hollowing out of civic spaces, lack of investment in community spaces, alongside the inequalities of opportunity and failures of integration have left people more isolated, lonelier and alienated from the system”.
Matthew Bolton, Executive Director of Citizens UK, one of the other organisations participating in the research, highlights what he believes to be a dangerous breakdown of trust between people and their politicians, national institutions and perceived elites. “Any successful drive towards a more cohesive society needs to come from trusted local leaders who can help shift their neighbours’ feelings of anger and frustrations about a broken system and channel it towards community change.”
While concerns about immigration are rising, the research makes it clear that this is only part of the reason that Britons are unhappy. Many areas of the country – including those that experienced unrest in last year’s riots – face long-standing economic challenges, social dislocation and the hollowing out of civic spaces as well as failures of integration.
Many reasons to not be cheerful
Across the UK, including in towns and cities in the South East, the loss of industry, rising poverty and the decline of community spaces like pubs, clubs and youth centres have eroded the social bonds that once held communities together.
Some of the stark differences in connectivity between constituencies in the South and South East can be attributed to obvious factors like comparative levels of prosperity. But others are less easily explained. Why should Reading Central, for instance, rated -75 per cent for connectivity, differ so enormously from Hove and Portslade, with a positive score of +12 per cent?
Brighton Pavilion is another Sussex constituency that appears in the list of the top five most connected constituencies in the South East, with a positive score of 11 per cent. What makes these two constituencies so different?
Exploring these questions with Anouschka Rajah of ‘More in Common’ threw up some fascinating answers and further conundrums. Educational levels in the population of a constituency appear to have a positive influence on how connected people feel with others in the community, so the fact that many students from the two local universities tend to remain in the area after graduation could be a factor.
Relatively high levels of prosperity across both constituencies is obviously another. Brighton Kemptown, for instance, with a much higher level of deprivation, scores lower.
A frequently mentioned contributing factor to feelings of connectivity is how successfully immigrant communities are perceived to have integrated with local communities.
Both Hove & Portslade and Brighton Pavilion, while having quite a high percentage of immigrants, score positively on cultural integration and greater integration between groups, shown in the number of mixed households as compared with similar constituencies.
Taken at headline level, the national score of -2 for social connection makes for depressing reading. Anouschka outlined some of the reasons that could well be contributing towards people feeling less connected to their neighbours.
The pandemic and lockdown leading to the loss of many shared spaces and facilities certainly had an influence, as well as the long period of austerity. There are fewer institutions that everyone shares and trusts (like the BBC for example) with people tending to consult a far greater diversity of news sources.
Interestingly, Anouschka also identified the growth in home-based working as another factor. With all its positive aspects, it also leads to people having less interaction with work teams and regular travelling companions and can lead to greater social isolation – the ‘chat around the coffee machine’ that used to form part and parcel of finding out what is going on in the office and company has gone.
The growing trend towards forming connections online rather than meeting face to face is an obvious contributor – losing authentic local connections was a strong theme that came through from focus groups.
Reasons to be hopeful? Despite the apparently rather gloomy findings, there are reasons to feel more positive about the future.
A real nostalgia for the opportunity to connect emerged from the research, and people are much more optimistic about their local areas and have more trust in local politicians than in MPs.
There’s an opportunity for government and local authorities to really address the issues underlying a general feeling of social dislocation in many areas.
As Luke Tryl says, “The government needs to have a laser-like focus on policies that can boost social connection”. Without accessible, affordable places to meet and organise, many communities feel that they’ve lost not just services but their shared identity.
The “This Place Matters” report argues that the loss of both economic and social connection must be addressed if we are to build strong and stable communities across the UK.
This article was based on a press release from More in Common.
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