The Clarion Index 2023

Understanding the lives of our residents, hearing about their experiences, and how they feel about their communities, is key to Clarion ensuring we are set up to meet their changing needs. For the last 12 years, we have spoken to a representative sample of Clarion residents for 15 minutes. This year, we asked 2,000 of them a range of questions about their neighbourhood, jobs, wellbeing, finances, online lives, and their experience of us as a landlord. The findings are analysed and published as The Clarion Index, and we use these to shape our services.

The Clarion Index gives us a comprehensive insight into residents’ lives, views, and experiences.

To understand the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on residents, we have continued to include more questions this year about household budgets, energy bills and coping strategies for the ongoing levels of high inflation.

Despite the financial pressures and continued unsettledness many residents are facing, it is encouraging to see cohesion in Clarion communities remaining so strong with results around community and neighbourhood staying high: most residents are satisfied with the place where they live, and feel they belong there.

Clarion Index 2023: Key findings

86% of residents feel that they belong in their neighbourhood, and more than three quarters (77%) think their neighbourhood is somewhere people from different backgrounds get on well together. 78% of residents say they have easy access to high-quality green spaces near their home.

Unfortunately, we have seen a continued increase in reports of loneliness, and acute feelings of loneliness (16% are always or often lonely) are now significantly higher than the national level.

53% of working age residents are in paid employment, and 12% are unemployed and looking for work. We have seen an increase in residents not working due to a health issue or disability (20%), a shift also seen in the labour market more widely.

Our survey results show that the cost-of-living crisis is continuing to seriously impact Clarion households, who are increasingly having to make difficult decisions to manage their finances.

Over half (56%) of our residents say they feel worse off financially compared with only 12 months ago, and a worrying 51% say the crisis has had a negative effect on their mental health. Residents are actively budgeting to cope with the cost of living, but 77% are now cutting back on household spending, 28% have got into, or further into, debt and a growing number are even going without food as they cannot afford it (20%).

After increasing year-on-year from 2011 to 2018, internet use among Clarion residents remains below the national figure which is now approaching saturation point, as 83% of residents use the internet; of those, 89% say they use it at least once a day.