There are 1.2m chronically lonely people in England, and many more across the rest of the UK, making this a major issue that is now recognised in society today.

Over one million older people over the age of 65+ in the UK say they are always or often lonely.

Loneliness can lead to greater reliance on health and social care services and studies suggest that people with a high degree of loneliness are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

Source: AgeUK, 2018