The UK's loneliness league

THE REPORT IN FULL

Changing UK [1.57 MB ] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader
The table below ranks areas by their sense of loneliness or social fragmentation.

The higher the figure, the weaker the sense of belonging.

In the 1970s and 1980s London ranked highest on the loneliness index, or anomie as it is also called, but the most recent figures put Edinburgh top.

Stoke remains consistently at the opposite end of the scale.

*The remit of the Changing UK report was to collate data by BBC local radio areas. Scotland and Wales are not broken down in this way. So, for the purposes of the report, areas were created to mimic local radio stations to cover the major cities of Scotland and Wales.