Britain under Lockdown is the first report from Renew Normal: the People’s Commission on Life After COVID-19.

This report brings together stories and statistics about the change we’ve lived through in the last few months, bringing together contributions from nearly 12,000 members of the public who shared their ideas and experiences with us. We found that people’s experiences of the pandemic differed greatly, and early suggestions that lockdown would be a great leveller in society have proven false. Instead, we found that these nearly 12,000 experiences were just a snapshot of divergent experiences.

We found:

  • Over half (56%) of respondents said that they had learned to use some new technology that they did not use at all before the start of the pandemic, increasing among older age groups. More than 60% of respondents over 50 years old had learned to use new technology, with less than 50% of respondents under 40 years old having done so.
  • People were divided over the impact of the lockdown on their eating habits and exercise. 31% of respondents to our survey said they had been eating more healthily during lockdown, whilst a quarter of respondents said they had been eating less healthily during lockdown. 40% of respondents to our survey said they had been exercising more, whilst a similar number (36%) of respondents said they had been exercising less.
  • Age determined how successful the respondent thought the government were at communicating their message during the pandemic: roughly, the older a respondent was, the more likely they were to believe the government had not done a bad job.
  • Ethnic minorities and those who are disabled were more likely to believe that the government used too little power during lockdown than those who are white or not disabled respectively.
  • The less people earned, the more likely they were to say they had found working from home difficult.
  • Three quarters of respondents said they had not heard from their councillors or MPs by the time they’d completed the survey.

Read the full report.

Explore the full survey results (.xlsx).

Get involved in the next stage of the project.