Communities | State of Ageing in 2020

The data in this chapter shows that, generally speaking, those in later life are more likely to feel connected to their community than younger people. There are deep inequalities, however, with the poorest and those in poor health most at risk of being disconnected as they age.

The pandemic has highlighted the risks of these inequalities. The expansion of both mutual aid groups and volunteering has rightly been celebrated as the silver lining of COVID-19. But while helping others is known to improve wellbeing, opportunities to participate in our communities – and reap those benefits – are not equally available to all. And, at a time when more of us have come to rely on digital connection, those who are digitally excluded risk becoming further isolated from the world.

We want more people to live in connected communities: places with the social and physical infrastructure which enable us to forge thriving social connections and do the things that matter to us. This section begins by looking at how connected to our communities we feel, and the opportunities we have to participate. Then, we turn to the digital infrastructure – which has become even more prominent as an enabler of social connections during the pandemic, particularly for those most vulnerable to COVID-19. Finally, we turn to physical infrastructure – the places and spaces that facilitate connection, and the transport that enables us to get out and about.

• COVID-19 has improved our sense of connection – but mostly for people who are better off. Around half of people aged 50-69 who are ‘living comfortably’ feel more connected to their community than they did before lockdown, compared to a third of people who say they are ‘struggling to get by’. 
• There has been a steep decline over time, for every age group, in the proportion of people who report that they ‘definitely’ have someone to rely on. Less than two-thirds of people aged 50-64 said this in 2018-19, compared to 80% in 2013-14.
• One in three have become more involved in helping out locally since the pandemic hit. But this change has not been evenly distributed across the population. Those with more socio-economic advantage were more likely to say they had become more involved.
• Those potentially most in need of help were least likely to access it: a quarter (24%) of people aged 50-69 who are finding it quite difficult to get by said they were not aware of local voluntary groups, compared with 16% of those living comfortably.
• Use of the internet by older age groups rose during COVID-19 but there are still over 3.7 million people aged 55+ who have never used the internet, with inadequate digital skills most cited as the reason.  

The reasons behind this increasing sense of ‘belonging’ as we age are unclear: it could be that we spend more time in our neighbourhoods as we age, that we become more embedded in a place over the course of a lifetime, or perhaps because older people have often been traditionally provided with activities to support their community engagement.

None of these is immutable. Internal migration within the UK (people moving between different local authorities) is increasing, predominantly taking place among the under 40s, but rising again in the late 70s, perhaps as people move to be close to family. The activities to build connection may also be on the wane: the provision of day centres, for example, has fallen significantly since 2010. So we cannot assume that older people will remain rooted to the places they have lived for a long time, or become complacent about the provision of the social infrastructure which allows new social connections to build. Nevertheless, these figures offer an important counterbalance to the narrative of a loneliness crisis among older people.

This data shows a clear picture of connectedness across the age spectrum prior to the pandemic: older people, in general, felt the most connected to their neighbourhood. 2020, however, has seen everyone’s relationship with their neighbourhood change, as many people have spent more time at home, and as the need for – and desire to give – informal help to the people around us has increased. This has had a positive impact on people’s feelings of connectedness, but it has not been felt equally by all groups.

It is unclear what explains this increase in feelings of connectedness: whether the act of giving or receiving mutual aid, the feeling of shared experience, or the fact that people were spending more time in their homes and local communities. But something positive seems to have taken place which it would be valuable to try to nurture and preserve.

This data shows that those people who are living comfortable lives also enjoy good connections and a sense of belonging to the places in which they live. But for those who are struggling to get by, their challenges are compounded by, and possibly lead to, a lack of connection in their neighbourhoods. It is striking that people with long-term conditions or illnesses that greatly impact their daily activities – people who are perhaps likely most in need of support from those around them – are likewise less likely to feel connected to their neighbours. This demonstrates how the various facets of our lives that shape our wellbeing intersect and amplify one another.

If poor health prevents people from going out socially, this puts them at risk of loneliness and isolation, in turn increasing the risk of further adverse health impacts. We want to improve people’s health so that fewer people feel prevented from going out socially by their health. We also need supportive environments that enable people to go out in spite of their health conditions and communities in which people have places to go to.

That a higher proportion of women than men in every age group report that they definitely have someone to rely on likely reflects differences in forming and sustaining relationships over time. Still, almost a third of women and almost a half of men in mid-life don’t have someone they can definitely rely on.

There are multiple barriers which prevent people from volunteering, which particularly impact on marginalised and deprived groups. Our research shows that the key barriers to volunteering include cost, language barriers, digital exclusion and lack of confidence.

This year has seen a huge upswell in mutual, voluntary community activity, with people in local areas reaching out and organising themselves in order to support their most vulnerable neighbours. This has undoubtedly had a large impact, but we must also be aware that this impact has not been felt equally by everyone. Indeed, these new forms of support may not even have been visible to those who needed them most.

There are many people in their 70s, 80s and beyond who are digitally capable, and numbers are increasing. But age remains the biggest predictor of whether or not someone is online. Non-internet users are concentrated in particular groups: 71% of those offline have no more than a secondary education, and 47% are from low-income households. More than half (54%) of 50-69 year olds from BAME backgrounds would like to use the internet more, or for more things, compared to a quarter (26%) of White 50-69 year olds.

Not only does this digital exclusion impact people’s ability to be connected, it also of course has financial implications. Workers who are digitally enabled earn, on average, an additional £2,160 per year compared to workers who are not digitally enabled.

COVID-19 may have accelerated the trends in internet use. Clearly, many people in mid- and later-life are using the internet to stay connected more than they did before. But while ‘zoom quizzes’ have been a staple for many of us in getting through lockdown, our survey also suggests that older people were the least likely to get involved in such activities. At least 90% of people under 60 (and at least 96% of people under 40) said the internet was important for them for talking to friends and family during lockdown, compared to just 82% of people in their 60s, and 71% of people aged 70 and over. Again, this suggests that those who might benefit most from new forms of social connection and support forged during lockdown were among the least likely to access it.

For the most part, we do not know the number of civic and public spaces – the places which physically facilitate social connections – that are available to people, and how those numbers have changed over time. We also don’t know how much the activities in and around these places – the clubs, the talks, the exhibitions – have changed. We know that local authorities made redundancies over the last decade, and we know that the number of local authority staff – including many people who make these places and activities work – has fallen. But we can’t be precise about the scale of those losses.

In other words, we know that the squeeze on public finances – and particularly local government finances – has impacted seriously on the availability of the places and activities which make up a large part of the social infrastructure of the UK, but we don’t have a national picture which shows exactly how. Where these things are counted, they are not necessarily counted in the same way in different parts of the country.

We can, however, use the decline in local authority spending on cultural and community activities as a proxy. This does not necessarily directly correlate to the scale of the decline in such activities. Local councils have pushed hard to make efficiency savings over the last decade: trying to provide the same level of service for less money by, for example, moving them into the voluntary sector, or changing the way they are run.

But while there is not a one-to-one relationship between local authority spending and the availability of facilities and activities on the ground, the very limited evidence we have on what that money is spent on suggests that at least some of these activities have been directly scaled back.

Libraries are key sites of community connection, as well as an important civic and educational resource for everyone. We can also use them as a proxy for the availability of community services. There has not just been a fall in the number of libraries, but a large shift in the provision of libraries from paid staff to volunteers – again, a pattern which is repeated in many other local community and neighbourhood services.

We can think of this picture of what has happened to libraries as small window into a broader phenomenon which is very visible to people at a local level. Without more quantitative data, it is crucial that the voices of communities about the loss of facilities which support our social infrastructure is heard within the national-level policy discussion.

Our research threw up an apparent contradiction: those who found it difficult not having their own outdoor space during lockdown were less likely to use their local park than those who had – and valued having – their own outdoor space. Whatever the reasons behind this observation, inequalities of access risk entrenching inequalities of outcome – in our mental and physical health, as well as general wellbeing.

Our ability to access places, spaces and people in our communities is significantly dictated by how easily we can travel to them. As the above shows, cars and walking remain our key mode of getting around throughout our lives. Bus travel rises but the use of other forms of public transport falls. Removing barriers to public transport use, including simply making it available, is key to retaining equitable access to our communities throughout our lives.

There are many reasons to want to increase public transport use – most notably environmental ones. From the perspective of the age shift in our population, it is crucial that we all have access to the public transport we need to get around, so we can maintain our independence and prevent isolation as we age. That ‘inconvenience’ is cited as a key reason for not using public transport among people in mid- and later-life is therefore a concern: this is not merely a matter of personal preference, but a matter of inclusion vs exclusion.

This increase in people citing the unavailability of public transport services coincides with changes in policy and funding. The availability of buses, for example, has fallen since 2009-10: since then, vehicle miles travelled by local authority buses have more than halved – from 247 million to 114 million in 2017-18 – while commercial bus miles have remained largely the same. In 2017-18 alone, 96 local authority bus routes in England were cut, and 147 were amended or reduced. If the slack is being taken up by more flexible, community transport options, then we could see better options available for many older people than fixed bus routes, particularly those who cite ‘health’ as their main reason for not taking public transport. But right now, the numbers suggest that this is not what is happening – not, at least, at scale.

Living in places that we feel connected to, and that enable us to remain connected to each other, is fundamental to our wellbeing. We need action from central and local government, and from civil society, to ensure that the benefits of giving and receiving help, of spending time in community spaces, and getting out and about in our communities can be enjoyed by everyone.