British Resilience Index: United Kingdom national resilience dashboard
UK Societal Resilience · September 2026
A stress reading from 0 to 100. Higher means more stress; 0 is calm, 100 is the most severe reading the scale describes.
robust range 44–52 under alternative methods
A single measured reading across eleven national systems. The United Kingdom is fragile, and has eased 1 point since the previous release.
Medium · 71 of 73 indicators verified
What the index is, one finding this release, and the monthly email
What this is
A non-partisan reading of Britain's core systems
The British Resilience Index is a UK civic data project. It reads eleven national systems, from health and housing to public finances and trust, as one stress score out of 100, and follows single official datasets in 65 sourced deep dives. Every figure traces to an official UK source.
One finding · September 2026
Neighbourhood belonging
The stress score for Neighbourhood belonging (Trust and Wellbeing) rose 14 points since the August 2026 release, to 56 out of 100, a deterioration. Higher means more stress. What changed: new observation, source changed. Its normalisation also changed, so not all of the movement is new data.
The monthly reading
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Release movements
What changed this release
Since the August 2026 release
15 of 71 comparable indicators had a real change in their inputs since the August 2026 release. Stress scores on 51 indicators moved with no change to their inputs; that movement is a methodology effect, not new data.
- New observations
- 6
- the publisher released a later period
- Revised values
- 4
- the same period, a changed figure
- Restated series
- 4
- an earlier point in the history changed
- Changed sources
- 6
- a different series, provider or link
- Normalisation changes
- 5
- scored against fixed bounds instead of own history, or the reverse
An indicator can appear in more than one category. Counts cover scored indicators present in both releases.
Key deteriorations
| Metric | Domain | Score | Movement | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neighbourhood belongingnew observation, source changed, normalisation changed | Trust and Wellbeing | 56 | +14 pts | 0.75 |
| Debt interest as share of revenuenew observation, source changed | Fiscal Resilience | 58 | +12 pts | 0.85 |
| Children looked afterhistory restated | Childhood and Social Floor | 59 | +7 pts | 0.85 |
| Bathing water qualitysource changed | Environment and Climate | 69 | +5 pts | 0.85 |
| Fuel povertyhistory restated, normalisation changed | Living Standards | 12 | +4 pts | 0.80 |
Change since the August 2026 release. Only indicators whose inputs changed since that release are listed: a new observation, a revised value, a restated series or a changed source.
Key improvements
| Metric | Domain | Score | Movement | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zero-hours contractsnew observation | Work and Productivity | 66 | −20 pts | 0.75 |
| Energy bill affordability pressurenew observation, source changed | Living Standards | 31 | −15 pts | 0.70 |
| Prison capacity utilisation (E&W)new observation, source changed, normalisation changed | Rule of Law and Safety | 50 | −9 pts | 0.95 |
| Real average weekly earnings growthvalue revised | Living Standards | 30 | −8 pts | 0.85 |
| Current budget deficitvalue revised | Fiscal Resilience | 22 | −8 pts | 0.85 |
Change since the August 2026 release. Only indicators whose inputs changed since that release are listed: a new observation, a revised value, a restated series or a changed source.
Scores are stress readings out of 100; higher means more stress. Most indicators update annually or quarterly, so a large movement usually marks a new official release entering the index, not a change that happened within the month.
11 systems · measured
Each national system, on one scale
Each figure is a stress score from 0 to 100. Higher means more stress, so the most stressed systems sit at the top.
The tick beside each score is its movement since the August 2026 release.
Weighting
What drives the headline figure
The headline is a weighted reading across all systems. This shows which carry the most weight once their stress score and domain weight are combined.
Historical trajectory
National stress, 2010–present
National trajectory
British Resilience Index · Historical Trend
Current
51Level-only modelled trajectory from verified official statistics; all 11 domains in this view are covered from 2018 (sparser before 2015). Each year's published values are re-scored on today's scale: it shows where stress sat, not a live historical index, and the current headline additionally reflects short-term trend, so it can differ from the final plotted point. COVID-era stress appears mainly from 2021, as the waiting-list, housing and court pressures it triggered entered the annual statistics with a lag.
Concurrent stress
Domains at extreme stress
One domain is scoring 75 or above in this release. This is reported as a signal and does not change the national score. The index measures each domain separately and holds no model of how a failure in one would propagate to another, so it cannot say what concurrent strain costs; it can only say that it is present.
Domains at or above 75
Go deeper
Deep dives into the data
Beyond the headline score, we take single official datasets and follow one topic all the way down: who, where, how much, and which way it is moving. A few to start with:
How the four hour standard has slipped to 75 per cent, the rise in 12 hour waits, and the worst trusts.
33.9 million appointments in July 2026, 4.3 per cent more than a year earlier, 44.7 per cent seen the same day and 82.0 per cent within two weeks, who delivers them, and the official split between urgent and routine care.
7,278,384 referral to treatment pathways were waiting at the end of May 2026, around 6.2 million individual patients, with 65.6 per cent within 18 weeks against a 92 per cent standard last met in September 2015, and 104,734 waits of more than a year.
How the price of a home has climbed over thirty years, how far it varies between places, and where West Lothian sits.
What share of children grow up in a low income family, by local authority and nation, how much housing costs add, and where West Lothian sits.
How many households cannot keep warm at a reasonable cost, by region and local authority, and how the measure has changed since 2010.
Britain publishes the gambling industry quarterly to the penny, and cannot agree how many adults are harmed by it: two sets of official statistics differ sixfold and an independent review says a third of the gap is unexplained. It has counted 21 gambling related suicides ever, none since 2016, records gambling nowhere in its insolvency statistics, and publishes no NHS waiting times or outcomes. When the NHS came to spend the new levy it declined to use the prevalence data at all.
A British Resilience Index analysis ranking English local authorities on fuel poverty, child low income and drug deaths together, to show where the deepest hardship overlaps.
How many years of pay a home costs in every local authority: 7.63 times typical earnings in England, down from the 2021 peak but more than double the 1997 ratio.
134,210 households, including 176,130 children, were living in temporary accommodation on 31 December 2025, down slightly from the record set the previous quarter, the first quarterly fall since 2022, but still up 5.0 per cent on a year earlier.
The storm overflow record: how often each water company spills, into which rivers, and whether it is getting better or worse.
Critical national infrastructure since 2024, five AI Growth Zones, tens of billions announced and a 50 GW connection queue, yet the first official electricity figures arrived only in June 2026 and no official count of the sites exists. In Scotland, where the energy case is strongest, a 7,200 comment planning file, a refused Edinburgh scheme and a ministerial takeback tell the backlash story.
The NATS flight data system failed on 8 September 2026, three years after the 2023 failure that hit over 700,000 passengers and cost £75m to £100m. What the official reviews found, how the 34 recommendations were signed off as complete, why NATS beats its delay target on a normal day, how UK airspace compares with Europe, and why Heathrow, 2,130 movements under its cap, cannot absorb a lost afternoon.
The average Band D council tax bill in England is 2,392 pounds in 2026 to 2027, up 4.9 per cent: how it has climbed since 1993, where bills are highest and lowest, and who raised them most this year.
Police recorded 91,987 malicious communications offences in 2025/26, down from 288,939 at the peak, a fall the statisticians attribute to a counting rule change. Three in a hundred closed investigations ended in a charge and the courts convicted 2,487 people under the four offences in 2025. Arrests by offence are published by no department, so a campaign group’s 62,199 figure could run unchallenged.
Your area
Find your council
Every English upper tier council has a sourced profile: children's services, temporary accommodation, school absence, deprivation and financial pressure, each figure traced to its official dataset.
The monthly reading
Follow the number over time
A single reading is a snapshot. The value is in the direction of travel. Once a month we send the new national score, what moved, and the sharpest findings from the data, with every figure traceable to its official source.
Data provenance
71 of 73 indicators are drawn from verified official sources, each labelled on its metric card. The remaining 2 are provisional placeholders, marked as seed where they appear, because no clean official figure is published yet; placeholders are shown for transparency and are excluded from all scoring.