Official Statistics

Community Life Survey 2024/25: Guidance for interpreting these statistics

Updated 10 December 2025

Applies to England

Guidance: Interpreting our statistics

The Community Life Survey is a nationally representative annual survey of adults (16+) in England that tracks the latest trends and developments across areas related to encouraging social action and empowering communities. This release provides estimates reported during the period of October 2024 to March 2025 (2024/25).

In both 2023/24 and 2024/25, DCMS partnered with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to increase the sample size of the Community Life Survey (to 175,000 from 10,000 in previous years), enabling the production of meaningful estimates at the Local Authority level. The questionnaire was developed collaboratively to reflect the priorities and interests of both departments. As a result, in 2023/24 and 2024/25 the survey included new questions as well as changes to existing ones, including updates to response options and definitions. Survey changes for each of these years are documented in the accompanying technical reports for 2023/24 and 2024/25, and in the relevant sections of this statistical release. Questionnaire changes can affect results, and therefore should be taken into consideration when interpreting the findings.

This release presents the headline estimates during the period from October 2024 to March 2025, alongside key demographic and geographical breakdowns. Further estimates can be found in the accompanying data tables. Estimates for the final quarter of 2024/25 (January to March 2025) have also been published in a separate set of data tables.

Comparisons of this year’s 2024/25 results are made against the previous year 2023/24 (covering the period of October 2023 to March 2024). Where available, sections include a time series, which tracks trends from 2013/14, when the push-to-web data collection commenced, to the latest year of data collection (2024/25). When making comparisons between data, it should be noted that:

• The 2023/24 and 2024/25 survey ran over two quarters, compared with three or four quarters in previous years. Analysis was conducted in 2023/24 to assess the impact of any effects of seasonality on survey estimates and comparisons between years, with limited seasonality impacts noted. Further details can be found in the 2023/24 technical report and in the relevant sections of this statistical release.

• Due to the boosted sample size in the 2023/24 and 2024/25 Community Life Survey, confidence intervals are generally very narrow for these years, whilst these are wider for survey years 2013/14 to 2021/22, when sample sizes were approximately 10,000.

Confidence intervals can be found in the accompanying data tables, and should be borne in mind when assessing trends over time.

In this publication, only statistically significant differences between groups are reported on. That is, where we can be more confident that the differences seen in our sampled respondents reflect real differences in the population ^{[footnote 1]}.

The majority of estimates in this report are rounded to the nearest whole number. Where there has been a small but significant statistical change, estimates may be presented to one decimal place for clarity. As data are rounded, some changes may appear bigger or smaller than they are. The unrounded numbers are available in the corresponding data tables.

Some survey questions are multi-coded meaning that respondents could select any number of response options. In these cases, the sum of the percentage for responses will exceed 100%.

The Community Life Survey issues both paper and web questionnaires. In order to reduce respondent burden and due to routing complexities on a paper questionnaire, not all questions are included in the paper questionnaire. The web questionnaire is also split into core and subset questions. Subset questions are only asked of approximately a third of online respondents and core questions are asked to all respondents online.

We have noted cases where questions were only asked to online respondents, so these data will only reflect the online population. We have also noted where questions were only asked to a subset of online respondents. Due to changes in the questionnaire, there may be differences in the population responding between survey years.

In this report, most demographic groups are compared to the groups within that demographic category ^{[footnote 2]}. However, where there are more than 6 options, we have compared the group to the national average^{[footnote 3]}, providing context on how the particular value for that demographic compares to the whole population. This applies to the age, religion and ethnicity demographic groups. The exception to this rule is for the Index of Multiple Deprivation demographic where a standard approach is to compare the least and most deprived areas.

Annex 1

1. The Community Life Survey is commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). DCMS took on responsibility for the Community Life survey (CLS) from 2016/17 onwards, following delivery of the survey by the Cabinet Office from its inception in 2012 to 2015/16.
2. To note that no Community Life Survey was conducted in 2022/23. Time series charts within this report present a dotted line between survey estimates in 2021/22 and 2023/24.
3. The fieldwork for the 2024/25 Community Life Survey was conducted by Verian (formerly Kantar Public).
4. This release is based on self-completed questionnaires conducted either online or using paper questionnaires. The survey was completed between October 2024 to March 2025. The total sample size for this survey year was 177,749. Sample sizes for each breakdown can be found in the accompanying tables.
5. All households sampled were invited to complete the survey online with the option to request a paper questionnaire instead. A targeted sample was also sent up to two paper questionnaires in their first or second reminder letter to encourage responses from those at risk of digital exclusion. From October 2024 to March 2025, 156,679 people (88.1%) completed the survey online and 21,070 (11.9%) completed the paper version of the questionnaire. Due to space limitations in the paper questionnaire, not all questions from the online survey are included in the paper version and the source of each survey measure is therefore referenced in the accompanying tables. Please take this into consideration when interpreting the results.
6. The Community Life Survey represents a set of Official Statistics and as such has been produced to the professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Official Statistics undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure they meet customer needs and are produced free from any political interference. Please see the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for more information.
7. Stringent quality assurance procedures have been adopted for this statistical release. All data and analysis had been checked and verified by at least two different members of the DCMS team and Verian to ensure the highest level of quality.
8. The Community Life Survey measures participation by adults (aged 16 and over) living in private households in England. No geographical restriction is placed on where the activity or event occurred.
9. Changes over time and differences between groups are only reported on where they are statistically significant at the 95% level. Statistically significant differences have been determined in this report on the basis of non-overlapping confidence intervals. This means that we can be confident that the differences seen in our sampled respondents are reflective of the population. Specifically, the statistical tests used mean we can be confident that if we carried out the same survey on different random samples of the population, 95 times out of 100 we would get similar findings. When sample sizes are smaller, we can be less confident in our estimates, so differences need to be greater to be considered statistically significant.
10. The upper and lower bounds presented in this report have been calculated using a 95% confidence interval. This means that had the sample been conducted 100 times, creating 100 confidence intervals, then 95 of these intervals would contain the true value. When the sample size is smaller, as is the case for certain groups and in certain years, the confidence intervals are wider as we can be less certain that the individuals in the sample are representative of the population. This means that it is more difficult to draw inferences from the results.
11. The data is weighted to ensure representativeness of the Community Life Survey sample. Detailed information on the weighting procedure can be found in the Technical Note.
12. The GSS has a policy of monitoring and reducing statistical survey burden to participants where possible, and the burden imposed should be proportionate to the benefits arising from the use of the statistics. As a producer of statistics, DCMS is transparent in its approach to monitoring and reducing the burden on those providing their information, and on those involved in collecting, recording and supplying data. The compliance cost of a survey is calculated by [Number of responses to the survey multiplied by the median time spent completing the survey (in minutes)]. The Community Life Survey had 177,749 respondents in October 2024 to April 2025, and the median survey completion time was 24 minutes 49 seconds, therefore the compliance cost for the survey this year was around 73,500 hours.
13. For more information about the Community Life Survey and to access other guidance documents and the questionnaire, see the Community Life Survey web pages.
14. The responsible analyst for this release is Rebecca Wyton. For enquiries on this release, contact communitylifesurvey@dcms.gov.uk.

1. The 95% confidence intervals are indicated by error bars on the charts, and included in the accompanying data tables. They show the range that we are 95% confident that the true value for the population falls between. When there is no overlap between the error bars/confidence intervals for two or more groups, we can be more confident that the differences between the groups represent true differences between these groups in the population. ↩

2. Where possible, demographic breakdowns are provided for age, disability status, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, socio-economic classification, IMD and ITL1/ITL2 areas. We have reported findings based on a single demographic rather than the intersection of multiple demographics. It is therefore possible that similar trends are seen in multiple demographics, although we have not tested this hypothesis within the Community Life Survey data. ↩

3. The caveat with this approach is that comparing with the national average includes comparing the specific demographic group against itself. This is particularly an issue when the demographic makes up a large proportion of all respondents. ↩