Lonely Nation: How to tackle loneliness through the built environment

This report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), in collaboration with the Randal Charitable Foundation and the Wates Family Enterprise Trust, demonstrates the importance of the built environment for tackling loneliness and argues for government to prioritise development with design features that contribute to social connection and wellbeing.

With research now showing the lack of control that many feel over the future of their communities, the report, Part 3 of the Lonely Nation series, outlines how government can entrust communities with significant new responsibilities. It recommends supercharging neighbourhood planning, increasing the supply of community led housing and introducing a new Community Right to Buy to help empower local communities with a sense of ownership.

Sharing examples of some of the most effective community groups in the UK, CSJ's report also shows that to meet its ambition to build 1.5 million new homes, as well as tackle loneliness, the government should embrace beauty, design codes, access to green space, neighbourhood planning and community led housing, particularly as the means to regenerate Britain’s most disadvantaged places. It argues that planners, architects and others responsible for creating the built environment also need to do much more to regain public confidence.

Concluding that thoughtful planning, with a renewed emphasis on placemaking that prioritises tackling loneliness, can revitalise community life as well as tackle the housing crisis, the report has ten key recommendations for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Regulator of Social Housing and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.