Five per cent have no contact with neighbours

A couple of points in the Full of Life survey which I mentioned the other day got me rummaging among other surveys looking for similar questions to see if there are comparable answers which tell us something.

Health warning: some of these sources can only be found in press releases or newspaper articles with little or no supporting evidence (a boringly familiar complaint which applies to the Full of Life findings also). With one exception, they're all UK, GB or English sources.

First, evidence about the more prominent neighbourly connections:

Neighbours known well enough to say 'hello'
Full of Life survey 2008 - 93%

Said hello to at least one person in street in past week
BBC 2008 - 89%

Have good relationship with neighbours
Nat Assn Estate Agents 2007 - 89%

Get on well with some, most or all of neighbours
Manchester neighbourliness review 2005 - 92%

Speak to neighbours up to once/week
General Household Survey 2000 - 81%

Speak to next door or nearest neighbour at least once/week
Neighbourhood Watch members 2005 - 91%

Next, evidence of detachment from neighbouring:

Don't know neighbour at all
Lloyds TSB 2004 - 4%
NAEA 2007 - 6%

Don't know neighbour at all even by name
Neighbourhood Watch members 2005 - 8%

Have no contact with neighbours
Manchester neighbourliness review 2005 - 6%
Survey of English Housing 2003 - 4%

No neighbours known
General Household Survey 2000 - 6%

Don't know people in neighbourhood
Hong Kong Survey 2002 - 6%

Don't know name of next door neighbour
Aviva (Norwich Union) 2006 - 55% (hmm, is this a typo?)
Full of Life survey 2008 - 5%

Never see neighbours for a chat
Health and Lifestyles Survey 1991-1992 - 5%

Don't know neighbours well enough to have a chat with
Bournville estate study 2003 - 3%

Never talk to neighbours
British Household Panel Survey 2002 - 2.5%

A month without speaking to a neighbour
Aviva (Norwich Union) 2006 - 12%

Have never or hardly ever spoken to neighbours
Halifax 2006 - 20%

Speak to neighbours less than once a week
General Household Survey 2000 - 19%

When go out, never see someone you know well in the neighbourhood?
Manchester neighbourliness review 2005 - 7%

So do we think things are changing?

Neighbours becoming more distant
Lloyds TSB 2004 - 58%

Neighbourhood becoming less friendly
BBC 2008 - 22%

We are becoming less neighbourly
Aviva (Norwich Union) 2006 - 64%

Relations with neighbours have declined over past five years
Halifax 2006 - men 13% women 20%

It's less neighbourly today than ten years ago
Kleeneze 2000 - 79%

So from all this it would be reasonable to draw three tentative conclusions:

• about 90% of us enjoy good relationships with our neighbours and speak to them often
• about 5% of us have no contact with our neighbours
• there's no consensus on whether neighbourliness is in decline.

But here's another thought. According to one of the seminal sources in this field, single people tend to be less neighbourly in all respects (Coulthard et al [GHS] 2000, p29). Thirty per cent of households now comprise a single person: nearly four times as many people are living alone in Great Britain than in 1961. So a decline in neighbourliness might be what we'd expect.