Oxford launches UK-wide survey on community trust and belonging

Oxford has launched a UK-wide listening initiative that asks adults to do more than tick boxes: The National Conversation invites people aged 16 and over who live in the United Kingdom to complete a 10 to 15 minute questionnaire and, if they choose, leave voice notes on what they want to see changed.

The project, run by Oxford Population Health’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Nuffield College, is anonymous and lets participants withdraw at any time. It is designed to collect large-scale evidence on social cohesion, trust, belonging and community life across Britain, with interactive features including mapping and postcode-based questions that are meant to show how different places actually feel.

Oxford says the effort will run until the end of August 2026 and is intended to feed directly into the Independent Commission on Community Cohesion, which is co-led by former Cabinet Minister Sir Sajid Javid and former Labour MP Jon Cruddas. That makes the survey less a one-off public exercise than an attempt to turn scattered grievances and local experience into something policy makers can act on.

The stakes are high. Oxford is rolling out the project against a backdrop of violent riots, attacks targeting migrant communities and asylum accommodation, sharpening political polarisation and weakening trust in institutions. In that context, the central question is not whether people have views about their communities, but whether anyone in power will be prepared to respond when those views are collected at scale.

The timing also places the survey alongside a wider policy debate already underway. The Office for National Statistics’ latest release on trust in government, UK, was published on 1 March 2024 and drew on 2023 data, underscoring that confidence in institutions remains a live issue. In April 2026, the UK government published Protecting What Matters: Towards a more confident, cohesive, and resilient United Kingdom, which framed national cohesion in terms of common values, identity, pride, trust, decency and belonging.

Oxford’s pitch is that the project can do something most public debate cannot: show how people experience their area, not simply how they vote. The test now is whether the frustrations voiced in a 10 to 15 minute survey can be translated into priorities with political force, or whether another round of public consultation will end where so many others do, with mood captured but trust unchanged.