No evidence institution for social connection, loneliness and civic health

The What Works Centre for Wellbeing closed on 30 April 2024, taking with it the Campaign to End Loneliness it had hosted since 2021; both websites are now static archives. DCMS's loneliness team was repurposed in 2020 and ministerial focus has faded. The £34.5m Know Your Neighbourhood Fund, the largest recent experiment in volunteering and loneliness interventions across 27 deprived areas, ended in March 2026 with its evaluation published and no institutional owner to carry the findings forward. The Jo Cox Foundation's policy group and academic centres cover parts, and nothing synthesises evidence, sets standards or advises funders at national scale.

Government and funders are about to spend billions on neighbourhood renewal whose stated aims include social connection, and no institution can say what works. Evidence from a decade of loneliness programmes is fragmenting exactly as demand for it peaks.

A What Works Centre for Social Connection and Civic Life with ten-year endowed funding from ESRC, DCMS and foundations, formally owning the Know Your Neighbourhood evidence base and Community Life Survey analysis, with evaluation duties written into Pride in Place and Community Wealth Fund delivery.

// Build together: Counterparty: ESRC/DCMS as endowment co-funders; evaluation duties inside government programmes require them at the table.

Billions are flowing into neighbourhood renewal with no institution to say what works, and a decade of loneliness evidence orphaned by the closures needs a home now.