In a survey carried out in May 2020, 13 percent of Brits expected the coronavirus lockdown measures to stay in place until the end of July. Another 13 percent of respondents were more optimistic and thought the lockdown measures would be in place until the end of June, although 14 of respondents expected the lockdown to carry on until 2021.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

In the United Kingdom, following the long third national lockdown, non-essential stores reopened on Monday April 12, 2021, and with that consumers flocked to high streets to shop and enjoy the restaurants serving customers again. According to recent data that estimated the value of retail spending during the week of reopening, UK consumers were projected to spend over one billion British pounds on Saturday April 17. Overall, the estimates show that the total spending in that week would exceed four billion British pounds.

The economy of the United Kingdom is expected to fall by 35 percent in the second quarter of 2020, following the Coronavirus outbreak and closure of several businesses. According to the forecast the economy will bounce back in the third quarter of 2020, based on a scenario where the lockdown lasts for three months, with social distancing gradually phased out over a subsequent three-month period.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had a major impact on businesses within the accommodation and food service industry in the United Kingdom. Fewer businesses were trading at the start of the outbreak in March 2020, with the lowest value recorded during the first few weeks of lockdown from April 6-19 (18.2 percent). Since July most businesses have returned to trading, reaching close to 90 percent in the first week of August. However, the share of accommodation and food service businesses trading have fluctuated from September 21 onwards. By March 21, 2021, the number of businesses trading reached 37.3 percent.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which engulfed the world in early 2020, consumers across the globe have been hesitant to shop in-store, in order to buy the goods they want and need. In the United Kingdom, shopping intentions among consumers had shown positive momentum over the later months: by April 2021, the number of UK shoppers intending to visit grocery stores had grown around 12 percent.

The data collection consists of 40 qualitative interviews with Polish migrant essential workers living in the UK and 10 in-depth expert interviews with key stakeholders providing information and support to migrant workers in the UK. All migrant interviews are in Polish. Six of the expert interviews with key stakeholders are in English and four are in Polish. Fieldwork was conducted fully online during the Covid-19 pandemic between March and August 2021, following the third UK-wide Covid-19 lockdown. Restrictions were still in place in some localities. Interviews took place shortly after the end of the transition period concluding the UK’s European Union exit on 1 January 2021. All Polish migrant worker interviewees entered the UK before 1 January 2021 and had the option to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme.

The objectives of the qualitative fieldwork were to: 1. To synthesise empirical and theoretical knowledge on the short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on migrant essential workers. 2. To establish how the pandemic affected Polish migrant essential worker's lives; and expert interviews with stakeholders in the public and third/voluntary sector to investigate how to best support and retain migrant essential workers in COVID-19 recovery strategies. The project also involved: - co-producing policy outputs with partner organisations in England and Scotland; and - an online survey to measure how Polish migrant essential workers across different roles and sectors were impacted by COVID-19 in regard to health, social, economic and cultural aspects, and intentions to stay in the UK/return to Poland (deposited separately to University of Sheffield). Key findings included significant new knowledge about the health, social, economic and cultural impacts of Covid-19 on migrant essential workers. Polish essential workers were severely impacted by the pandemic with major mental health impacts. Mental health support was insufficient throughout the UK. Those seeking support typically turned to private (online) services from Poland as they felt they could not access them in the UK because of language or cultural barriers, lack of understanding of the healthcare system and pathways to mental health support, support being offered during working hours only, or fear of the negative impact of using mental health services on work opportunities. Some participants were in extreme financial hardship, especially those with pre-settled status or those who arrived in the UK during the pandemic. The reasons for financial strain varied but there were strong patterns linked to increased pressure at work, greater exposure to Covid-19 as well as redundancies, pay cuts and rejected benefit applications. There was a tendency to avoid applying for state financial support. These impacts were compounded by the sense of isolation, helplessness, or long-distance grief due to inability to visit loved ones in Poland. Covid-19 impacted most detrimentally on women with caring responsibilities, single parents and people in the health and teaching sectors. The most vulnerable Polish migrant essential workers - e.g. those on lower income, with pre-existing health conditions, restricted access to support and limited English proficiency - were at most risk. Discrimination was reported, including not feeling treated equally in the workplace. The sense of discrimination two-fold: as essential workers (low-paid, low-status, unsafe jobs) and as Eastern Europeans (frequent disciplining practices, treated as threat, assumed to be less qualified). In terms of future plans, some essential workers intended to leave the UK or were unsure about their future place of residence. Brexit was a major reason for uncertain settlement plans. Vaccine hesitancy was identified, based on doubts about vaccination, especially amongst younger respondents who perceived low risks of Covid-19 for their own health, including women of childbearing age, who may have worries over unknown vaccine side-effects for fertility. Interview participants largely turned to Polish language sources for vaccination information, especially social media, and family and friends in Poland. This promoted the spread of misinformation as Poland has a strong anti-vaccination movement.

COVID-19 has exposed the UK's socio-economic dependence on a chronically insecure migrant essential workforce. While risking their lives to offset the devastating effects of the pandemic, migrant workers reportedly find themselves in precarious professional and personal circumstances (temporary zero-hours contracts, work exploitation, overcrowded accommodation, limited access to adequate health/social services including Universal Credit). This project will investigate the health, social, economic and cultural impacts of COVID-19 on the migrant essential workforce and how these might impact on their continued stay in the UK. It will focus on the largest non-British nationality in the UK, the Polish...

Given the outbreak of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), pandemic during March 2020, lockdown measures taken by governments have forced many families, especially those who have children, to re-arrange domestic and market work division. In this study, I investigate the factors associated with partnered and employed individuals’ involvement with housework during the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Drawing evidence from the first wave of the Covid-19 Survey from the Five National Longitudinal Studies dataset with using OLS regressions, this study found that daily working hours, socioeconomic status, and partner’s key worker status are important indicators of daily time spent on housework. Furthermore, interaction analysis showed that women living with a key worker partner not only did more housework than women whose partner was working in a regular job, but they also did more housework than men living with a key worker partner during the lockdown. Policy implications of regulating maximum daily working hours and key worker status are discussed in the context of re-arranging paid and unpaid work between couples during the first lockdown in the United Kingdom.

Citation: Sönmez, I ̇brahim. 2021. A Missed Opportunity for Men? Partnered and Employed Individuals’ Involvement with Housework during the COVID-19 Lockdown in the UK. SocialSciences10: 135. https:// doi.org/10.3390/socsci10040135

During the COVID-19 lockdown, families faced numerous challenges, including extended joint confinement, isolation, increased demands on parents, and financial worries. Co-SPACE, a study tracking changes in families' mental health, found a rise in behavior problems among children, causing stress for parents. Many parents expressed a need for additional support, preferably in digital form. These problems are likely to persist and increase as the pandemic continues, affecting schools and children's services. To address this, the SPARKLE project developed the Parent Positive app, featuring animated videos and practical tips on managing children's behavior. The study involved 616 Co-SPACE parents testing the app's effect on children's behavior. Positive results would lead to wider availability of the app through collaboration with public health and education authorities. The archived data is from three timepoints of 646 families involved in the SPARKLE trial.

With COVID-19 at the forefront, people may not have been aware of the importance of seeking medical help for early signs of cancer or taking up screening, when available, to diagnose cancer sooner. In addition, some people may not have wanted to be referred to a hospital for diagnostic tests due to fear of catching coronavirus in the healthcare setting. COVID-19 may have also affected whether people took part in healthy behaviours that could reduce the chances of getting cancer. These factors may have led to more cancers occurring, and more cancers being diagnosed at a late stage when treatment may be less successful.

To understand peoples experiences and attitudes towards potential symptoms of cancer, their help-seeking behaviours and engagement in prevention behaviours (i.e. smoking, diet, exercise, alcohol consumption) during the pandemic we carried out a large study in adults aged 18+ across the UK. We aimed to include adults from a range of different backgrounds.

Working closely with Cancer Research UK, we carried out an online survey with over 7,500 people to ask about any recent symptoms, cancer screening and health behaviours during the UK lockdown period. Survey questions included the time taken to visit the GP with a range of possible cancer symptoms, attitudes to cancer screening, anxiety about seeking help in the current situation, other barriers to seeking help, health behaviours including smoking, alcohol, diet and physical activity, and preferred ways of receiving public health information. The survey was repeated 6 months later to assess any changes in attitudes.

We also interview 26 people (by telephone) who had taken part in the survey across two timepoints (autumn 2020 and spring 2021) to understand their attitudes and behaviours in more detail and how these changed during the course of the pandemic.

Our study findings have been used to help in rapidly developing clear public health messages to encouraging people to act on the early signs of cancer, take up cancer screening when it became available and engage in healthy behaviours. Results from our study have been used to help to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on cancer outcomes in the longer term.

Background: The impact of COVID-19 on the UK public attitude towards cancer and potential cancer symptom help-seeking is likely to be considerable, translating into impact on the NHS from delayed referrals, missed screening and later-stage cancer diagnosis.

Aim: The aim of this study was to generate rapid self-report evidence on public views/responses of the covid-19 pandemic on caner symptoms to support and inform public health interventions with the potential to encourage: 1. timely symptom presentation, 2. engagement with cancer screening services and 3. improve cancer-related health behaviours I the wake of the pandemic.

Design: Prospective mixed-methods cohort study in the UK population.

Methods: During June-August 2020, and again six month later, we will conduct UK-wide online population survey of adults ages 18+. We measured attitudes and behaviour in the domains of 1. cancer symptom presentation, 2. intentions to engage with cancer screening, 3. Engagement in cancer-risk behaviours such as smoking, increased alcohol, poor diet and reduced physical activity. We sampled from established online cohorts (via CRUK and HealthWise Wales), supplemented with social media recruitment. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a sub-sample of survey participants to understand contextual influences on cancer attitudes and behaviours.

The Social Distancing and Development Study (SDDS) aimed to examine how changes in sleep, parenting style, social interactions, screen use and activities affect young children’s language and cognitive development since the Spring 2020 UK lockdown.

This longitudinal study followed a cohort of nearly 900 children aged 8 to 36 months of age, enrolled in an online study at the onset or during the Spring 2020 UK lockdown, to capture changes in their environment and measure their impact on children’s vocabulary size and executive function. Since Spring 2020, we have collected data at three additional timepoints: T2 – End of the Spring 2020 lockdown, T3 – November 2020 lockdown, and T4 – One-year follow-up.

On 20th March 2020, the UK Government instigated a nationwide nursery and school closure in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, followed by instructions for people to stay at home. For millions of children, this brought stark changes to their routines, with a decrease in outdoor activities and interactions with others.

The environments children grow up in heavily influence key elements of cognitive development such as language and executive functions, which in turn associate with later educational and occupational attainment as well as health and wellbeing. The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime situation that has dramatically changed the daily lives of millions of families. Several environmental factors likely to be affected by quarantine measures (such as sleep, parenting style and social interactions, screen use, and outdoor activities/exercise) are known predictors of language and executive function development.

The proposed study will follow up a UK-wide cohort of 600 children aged 8 to 36 months of age, enrolled in an online study at the onset of social distancing measures, to capture changes in key environmental variables and measure their impact on children's vocabulary size and executive function. Using sophisticated analyses on a large and diverse sample, we will examine the role of each factor on children's cognitive abilities. At this time of unforeseen and ongoing change, it is imperative to understand the impacts of the lockdown on cognition during a critical period for development (0 to 3 years of age), and then find strategies to minimise disruption to this cohort. Our findings will identify approaches that mitigate the temporary loss of formal early years' education, identify those groups most at risk of adverse consequences, and inform policy on how to remediate the negative impacts of lockdown post-COVID-19.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The UK Business Data Survey (UKBDS), commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, began in 2021. The survey is a telephone- and online-based quantitative and qualitative study of UK businesses. It gathers evidence on the importance and awareness of digital data use for UK businesses and seeks to understand the role of digital data in UK businesses, international transfers of data and activities undertaken for data protection compliance.

The 2021 UKBDS was the first time this survey had been carried out. The quantitative survey took place from November 2020 to January 2021 and the qualitative interviews were undertaken in February 2021. The research was delayed from spring 2020 to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the quality of responses and the robustness of the results.

The 2021 survey covers the following business practices relating to data:

• acquisition and sharing
• impact of COVID-19 on personal data collection
• data-related roles and skills
• data protection
• international transfer

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the lockdowns during this period had an impact on the attitudes of prospective home buyers in the United Kingdom (UK) in different ways. On one hand, there was a large percentage of prospective home buyers of 63 percent that said COVID-19 motivated them to buy homes between March 2020 and March 2021.
However, concerns of financial security and the home buying process being harder were also registered at high rates. 71 percent of prospective home buyers were worried about their financial security, 68 percent reported that lockdowns made it harder to buy homes. This shows that while the motivation and interest in buying homes was large, but the conditions of lockdown and the financial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic were a big barrier towards making purchases.

As global communities responded to COVID-19, we heard from public health officials that the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in products such as Google Maps would be helpful as they made critical decisions to combat COVID-19. These Community Mobility Reports aimed to provide insights into what changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports charted movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.

Household gross savings value in the United Kingdom (UK) spiked during the second quarter of 2020, reaching a value of approximately 92 billion British pounds. By contrast, during the first quarter of 2020, gross savings amounted to 35 billion British pounds. This unprecedented increase was due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the resulting widespread lockdown and temporary business closures. A similar increase in savings can be seen during the second genralized lockdown in the first quarter of 2021.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) is a longitudinal cohort study, a collaboration between the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), and the Sutton Trust. The overarching aim of COSMO is to provide a representative data resource to support research into how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the life chances of pupils with different characteristics, in terms of short-term effects on educational attainment, and long-term educational and career outcomes.

The topics covered by COSMO include, but are not limited to, young people's education experiences during the pandemic, cancelled assessments and education and career aspirations. They have also been asked for consent for linking their survey data to their administrative data held by organisations such as the UK Department for Education (DfE). Linked data is planned to be made available to researchers through the ONS Secure Research Service.

Young people who were in Year 11 in the 2020-2021 academic year were drawn as a clustered and stratified random sample from the National Pupil Database held by the DfE, as well as from a separate sample of independent schools from DfE's Get Information about Schools database. The parents/guardians of the sampled young people were also invited to take part in COSMO. Data from parents/guardians complement the data collected from young people.

Further information about the study may be found on the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities Study (COSMO) webpage.

COSMO Wave 1, 2021-2022
Data collection in Wave 1 was carried out between September 2021 and April 2022. Young people and parents/guardians were first invited to a web survey. In addition to receiving online reminders, some non-respondents were followed up via face-to-face visits over the winter and throughout spring.

Latest edition information:
The fourth edition (April 2024) follows the release of Wave 2 data. For this edition, a longitudinal parents dataset has been deposited, to help data users find core background information from parents who took part in either Wave 1 or Wave 2, in one place. A new version of the young person data file (version 2.1) has also been deposited. This file now includes weight variables for researchers who wish to analyse complete households, where, in addition to a young person taking part at Wave 1, a parent had taken part at either Wave (1 or Wave 2). The COSMO Wave 1 Data User Guide Version 2.1 explains these updates in detail.

Further information about the study may be found on the COSMO website.

Main Topics:

For young people, Wave 1 covered:

• a household grid
• current status
• qualifications studied towards
• education during the pandemic (on the basis of three main time periods: Lockdown 1: from April to July 2020, and Lockdown 3: from January to March 2021, and when most schools were open, September to December 2020)
• catch-up activities
• cancelled assessments
• education and career aspirations
• extra-curricular activities pre- and post-pandemic
• attitudes to education
• health and wellbeing
• friends, peers and family support; and
• health-related behaviours.

For parents, Wave 2 covered:

• demographics
• attitudes to education
• parenting, home learning, tuition and catch-up
• working status across the pandemic
• parental tenure, HRP and occupation details
• parental education
• parental income
• COVID-19 history and vaccination
• pandemic impact on family life
• parent health and well-being; and
• disadvantage.