health and care · the national record
Civic life in England: volunteering, trust and belonging
How connected people feel to the places they live, from the official DCMS Community Life Survey for England. In 2024/25 about 62 per cent of adults felt they belonged to their neighbourhood and 40 per cent said most people there can be trusted, but formal volunteering has fallen to 17 per cent a month, down from 27 per cent a decade ago. This page shows what holds communities together, where volunteering is strongest and weakest, and how loneliness sits.
How to read this
These are the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Community Life Survey headline statistics for England, a nationally representative survey of adults aged 16 and over. The 2024/25 figures cover responses gathered from October 2024 to March 2025. Each figure is a share of adults, for example the share who volunteered at least once a month or who feel they belong to their neighbourhood. The survey is England only, so there is no UK wide comparison here.
Computed from the DCMS Community Life Survey 2024/25 annual data tables, published 10 December 2025. England only. National figures are for 2024/25; the trend uses the published time series back to 2018/19, with earlier anchor years quoted from the DCMS release.
The national picture
Most people belong, fewer trust, and volunteering is falling
In 2024/25 about 62 per cent of adults in England felt they belonged very or fairly strongly to their immediate neighbourhood, and 60 per cent said they were proud to live in their local area. But only 40 per cent agreed that most people in their neighbourhood can be trusted, down from 48 per cent when this way of running the survey began in 2013/14. Volunteering has fallen further still: 17 per cent of adults now volunteer formally at least once a month, compared with 27 per cent a decade ago. Charitable giving is steadier, with 67 per cent giving money to a charitable cause in the last four weeks.
Share of adults aged 16 and over, England, 2024/25. Source: DCMS Community Life Survey.
Since 2013
Formal volunteering has drifted down, then stepped down
Formal volunteering means giving unpaid help to groups or clubs, for example running a group, coaching a team or helping a charity. The share of adults doing so at least once a month has fallen from a high of 27 per cent in 2013/14 to 16 per cent in 2023/24, edging back to 17 per cent in 2024/25. The sharpest fall came between 2019/20 and 2020/21, from 23 per cent to 17 per cent, when the pandemic and its restrictions cut off much organised volunteering. The bars below show the years the survey reports on a consistent basis; the survey was not run on this schedule in 2022/23.
Formal volunteering at least once a month in England, 2018/19 (22%) to 2024/25 (17%). The DCMS release records 27% in 2013/14. 2022/23 is not shown as the survey was not run on this schedule that year. Source: DCMS Community Life Survey.
Place matters
From under a fifth to almost a half
Where a person lives shapes how likely they are to volunteer. Among the lower tier local authorities, the share of adults who did any formal volunteering in the last 12 months runs from around 14 to 18 per cent in some cities and former industrial towns up to more than 40 per cent in parts of the South West and prosperous commuter areas. The national figure is 28 per cent. These are the published local estimates from the survey, so smaller areas carry wider margins of error.
Highest volunteering
Lowest volunteering
Adults who did any formal volunteering in the last 12 months, by lower tier local authority, 2024/25. England average: 28%. Isles of Scilly reports a high rate but has only about 200 survey respondents, so it is set aside as a small sample outlier. Source: DCMS Community Life Survey.
Loneliness
About one in fifteen feel lonely often or always
In 2024/25 about 7 per cent of adults, 6.6 per cent to one decimal, said they felt lonely often or always, a small but real fall from 7.1 per cent the year before. That is still higher than the 4.9 to 5.6 per cent recorded in the years to 2017/18. A wider measure of indirect loneliness, which combines how often people feel they lack companionship, feel left out and feel isolated, stood at about 9 per cent. Set against this, most people still have someone to turn to: 94 per cent agreed that if they needed help there would be people there for them.
Loneliness often or always is 6.6 per cent to one decimal in the release and rounds to 7 per cent in the data table shown here. Source: DCMS Community Life Survey.
Questions this raises
For communities and civil society
- 1.
Formal volunteering at least once a month has dropped from 27 per cent in 2013/14 to 17 per cent. How much of that is the pandemic and how much a longer erosion of the groups and clubs that people used to give time to?
- 2.
Belonging holds up at about 62 per cent even as trust has fallen to 40 per cent. Can a neighbourhood feel like home if most people there do not trust each other?
- 3.
Volunteering rates vary from under a fifth to almost a half between local areas. Is that mostly about who lives there, or about whether there are still groups to join?
- 4.
About one in fifteen adults feel lonely often or always, higher than a decade ago. Where should support go first, given loneliness is highest among some of the youngest and most disadvantaged adults?
Sources & method
Data provenance
- Community Life Survey 2024/25 annual publication, DCMS ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- Community Life Survey 2024/25: Annual data tables, DCMS ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- Community Life Survey 2024/25: Headline findings, DCMS ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
Caveats & data notes
- The Community Life Survey covers England only. It is a sample survey of adults aged 16 and over, so every figure has a margin of error and small differences between years may not be meaningful. It is not comparable with survey measures in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
- The trend uses the published time series for formal volunteering at least once a month. The survey moved to a mainly online, push-to-web method in 2013/14, and figures before then are not directly comparable. The survey was not run on this annual schedule in 2022/23, so that year is absent from the series.
- Earlier anchor years quoted in the text, such as 27 per cent formal volunteering, 48 per cent trust and 82 per cent charitable giving in 2013/14, are taken from the DCMS release rather than plotted, because the intervening annual points are not enumerated in the 2024/25 tables.
- Local authority figures are the published survey estimates for each area. Smaller areas have fewer respondents and wider confidence intervals, so the ranking should be read as indicative rather than exact.
- Loneliness often or always is reported as 6.6 per cent in the release and rounds to 7 per cent in the data table. The wider indirect loneliness measure was introduced in 2020/21.
- Source: DCMS Community Life Survey 2024/25 annual publication, released 10 December 2025.
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