Loneliness · Analysis
More than one in ten adults in Leicester feel lonely often or always, the highest rate of any council area in England. We ranked all 295 using two years of government survey data, and the map looks nothing like the stereotype.
Key findings
- Leicester has England’s highest loneliness rate: 10.5% of adults feel lonely often or always, against 6.7% across England.
- Four of the five loneliest places are in the North West: Oldham, Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester.
- Birmingham has more lonely adults than any other council area: about 80,600 people.
- 16 to 24-year-olds are 2.3 times as likely to feel lonely as people aged 65 to 74.
Jump to The ranking Big cities Who is lonely Neighbours How we worked it out
About 3.25 million adults in England say they feel lonely often or always. That is 6.7% of everyone aged 16 and over, according to the Community and Engagement Survey run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
In August the government published results for every council area in England. We could not find anyone who had ranked them, so we did, using two years of results and more than 370,000 survey answers. We have kept the margins of error in rather than pretending the order is exact.
What comes out is a map of towns and cities, of renters, and of people far younger than the lonely pensioner of popular imagination.
Leicester tops the list, and the North West fills the top five
Leicester comes first. 10.5% of its adults feel lonely often or always, about 1.6 times the England average. Oldham, Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester complete the top five.
Each area’s figure rests on roughly 1,000 interviews over two years, so we have been careful with the order. The top five sit within a percentage point of each other and another year of data could reshuffle them. The group is solid, though. Of England’s 295 areas, 21 are lonelier than average by a margin the survey can reliably detect, and 19 of them are in the top 20 below.
England’s 20 loneliest places
Adults aged 16 and over who feel lonely often or always, 2024/25 and 2025/26 combined.
Dashed line: England average (6.7%). Lighter bar: higher than average, but not by a margin the survey can confirm.
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Every place in the top 20 is a city or a town. That fits the national picture: 7.1% of people in urban areas feel lonely often or always, against 5.0% in rural areas.
At the bottom of the table sit the City of London, Rochford in Essex and Richmond upon Thames, all at around 3% or below. An adult in Leicester is more than three times as likely to be lonely as one in Richmond.
Birmingham has the most lonely adults of any council: about 80,600
A rate tells you how likely loneliness is. A headcount tells you how many people are living with it. Multiply each area’s rate by its adult population and Birmingham comes out on top of England’s councils, with nearly twice as many lonely adults as Liverpool. London’s 33 boroughs together hold about half a million.
England’s biggest cities, ranked
Adults who feel lonely often or always, 2024/25 and 2025/26 combined. Position out of 295 council areas.
Dashed line: England average (6.7%). Orange: higher than average by a margin the survey can confirm.
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| City | Rank of 295 | Lonely often or always | Estimated lonely adults |
|---|---|---|---|
| London (33 boroughs) | n/a | 6.7% | 502,000 |
| Birmingham | 21 | 8.7% | 80,600 |
| Leeds | 58 | 7.6% | 52,300 |
| Manchester | 5 | 9.6% | 46,000 |
| Liverpool | 4 | 9.7% | 41,200 |
| Sheffield | 51 | 7.7% | 37,100 |
| Bradford | 41 | 8.0% | 34,800 |
| County Durham | 62 | 7.6% | 34,200 |
| Bristol | 65 | 7.5% | 31,300 |
| Newcastle | 31 | 8.2% | 22,000 |
| Nottingham | 35 | 8.2% | 21,900 |
The sum
Estimated lonely adults = loneliness rate × population aged 16 and over
Birmingham: 8.7% × 927,553 = about 80,600. Population from ONS mid-2025 estimates. London combines its 33 boroughs, weighted by population.
London’s average hides a wide spread. Barking and Dagenham is 11th in England, while Richmond upon Thames is third from bottom.
If you live in one of these cities and fancy some company, we have local rooms for Liverpool , Manchester , Birmingham , Leeds , Sheffield , Bradford , Newcastle , Nottingham , Durham , Bristol and London .
The loneliest age group is 16 to 24, not pensioners
Ask people to picture loneliness and most imagine an older person living alone. The survey says otherwise. 9.1% of 16 to 24-year-olds feel lonely often or always, against 3.9% of people aged 65 to 74.
The rate falls with every age band until the mid-70s, then rises again to 5.0% among those aged 75 and over. Even then, the over-75s are less likely to be lonely than any group under 65.
Loneliness by age
Adults who feel lonely often or always, England, 2025/26.
Dashed line: all adults (6.7%).
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“Young people are the most digitally connected but also the most isolated in generations with many wanting more meaningful real life connections.” Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, launching the National Youth Strategy , December 2025
Age is not the sharpest divide, though. Disability, money and housing are.
Who feels lonely most often
Adults who feel lonely often or always, by group, England, 2025/26.
Dashed line: all adults (6.7%).
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People in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods are three times as likely to be lonely as people in the least deprived. Social renters are three times as likely as homeowners. Adults not living with a partner are nearly four times as likely as those who are.
“Indeed, severe financial worries make people feel very alone.” Robin Hewings, Programme Director, Campaign to End Loneliness , July 2023
Where people chat to their neighbours, fewer feel lonely
The same survey asks how often people chat to their neighbours, meaning more than a quick hello. Across England, 69% do so at least once a month. In Hammersmith and Fulham it is 52%. In South Hams, Devon, it is 82%.
Chatting to neighbours at least once a month
Adults aged 16 and over, 2024/25 and 2025/26 combined. The six lowest areas, Manchester, and the three highest.
Dashed line: England (69%). Grey: the three most chatty areas.
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Set the two measures side by side across all 295 areas and they move together. Places where more people chat to neighbours tend to have less loneliness, with a correlation of −0.43. The link is stronger still with feeling you belong to your neighbourhood (−0.54).
That does not prove a chat over the fence cures loneliness. Inner London shows why. It talks to its neighbours least, yet most of its boroughs are nowhere near the top of the loneliness table. Outside London, though, the pattern holds well. Manchester is fifth for loneliness and ninth lowest for neighbourly chat.
Whether talking online can do the same job is a separate question, and one we dug into in do chat rooms make us more honest or just more lonely?
What the ranking means for you
Loneliness in England is concentrated, not random. It clusters in cities, among renters and among the young. That makes it something councils and charities can target, and something individuals can recognise in themselves without blaming themselves.
If you live in a top-20 area
Loneliness there runs about 40% above the England average, so you are far from alone in feeling it. Across the data, places where neighbours talk more tend to be less lonely.
If you are 16 to 24
You are in the loneliest age group in the country. The Marmalade Trust’s loneliness guide has practical first steps.
If you rent or don’t live with a partner
These groups have some of the highest rates in the survey. Pick one regular thing that puts the same faces in front of you each week.
If you work for a council or charity
Download the full data below. It flags which areas are significantly above or below average, so you can tell real differences from survey noise.
Cite this analysis
World of Chat (2026). “England’s Loneliest Places Ranked: Leicester Comes Top”. https://www.worldofchat.co.uk/englands-loneliest-places/
Charts and data are free to reuse with a link to this page.
Download the data for all 295 areas (CSV)Sources
- DCMS, “Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26: loneliness” (14 August 2026): report and data tables C1 to C3. Loneliness by local authority, age, tenure, deprivation, household and rural or urban area.
- DCMS, “Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26: neighbourhood and community” (updated 16 September 2026): data tables D3 and D6. Belonging and chatting to neighbours by local authority.
- ONS, “Estimates of the population for England and Wales”, mid-2025 : table MYE2, population aged 16 and over by local authority.
- GOV.UK, “Government unveils ambitious plan to tackle youth isolation crisis” (10 December 2025): Lisa Nandy quote.
- Campaign to End Loneliness, “Half a million more people are lonely all or most of the time” (4 July 2023): Robin Hewings quote.
How we worked it out
Calculations are World of Chat’s own, derived from the cited figures. “Lonely” means answering “often” or “always” to “How often do you feel lonely?”. To steady the small samples in each area, we combined the 2024/25 and 2025/26 survey years, weighting each year by its number of respondents, and combined the published 95% confidence intervals the same way. An area counts as significantly above or below average only when its whole confidence interval sits on one side of the England figure for the same two years (6.7%). Headcounts multiply each area’s rate by its ONS mid-2025 population aged 16 and over. The survey covers England only, so Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not included. The Isles of Scilly are left out because the survey withheld its 2025/26 figure. Group figures (age, tenure, deprivation) are for 2025/26 alone. Correlations are across all 295 areas. Last checked: 1 October 2026.