Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 28 June to 9 July 2023

The following information is for the latest survey period 28 June to 9 July 2023, based on adults in Great Britain.

• When asked about the important issues facing the UK today, people's most common issues continued to be the cost of living (92%), the NHS (88%), the economy (79%), climate change and the environment (62%) and housing (62%).

• Around 6 in 10 (60%) adults reported that their cost of living had increased, compared with a month ago; this proportion appears to have gradually decreased since early April 2023, when it was at 76%.

• Around 3 in 10 (30%) respondents reported using their savings because of the rise in cost of living; this is an increase from a quarter (25%) of adults reporting this in late April 2023.

This fortnight, we asked adults about their experiences of accessing GP practices. We also asked about respondents’ knowledge of water use restrictions in their area and what actions they took to reduce water consumption.

• Of those respondents who tried to contact a GP practice to make an appointment in the last month, around a third (34%) found it difficult or very difficult, while nearly half (46%) found it easy or very easy to contact the GP practice.

• Around 7 in 10 respondents (72%) had taken some form of water-saving action in the last month, with the most commonly reported actions being not leaving the tap running (47%), and waiting until the washing machine or dishwasher is full before putting it on (44%).

Our release Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain: February to May 2023, published on 14 July 2023, considers how different groups of the population are affected by the rising cost of living.

This release contains data and indicators from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS's) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

From our 16 June 2023 release onwards, we have made changes that reduce the scope of the release and accompanying datasets. This is based on a routine review of the relevance and usefulness of this release.

Breakdowns by age and sex are no longer provided for fortnightly estimates in the latest Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain datasets. All previous versions of the dataset remain available from this page. Estimates from the OPN by these and other personal characteristics will continue to be provided on a regular basis in other ONS releases. For example, OPN estimates relating to the impact of cost of living among different subgroups of the population are provided within our regular Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain series.

We provide confidence intervals for all estimates in the datasets. Where changes in results from previous weeks are presented in this release, or comparisons between estimates are made, associated confidence intervals should be used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.

Sampling and weighting

In the latest period (28 June to 9 July 2023), we sampled 4,974 households. This sample was randomly selected from people who had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or OPN. The responding sample for the latest period contained 2,156 individuals, representing a 43.3% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on ONS population estimates). Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).