Public perceptions of health and social care (November 2023) The fifth wave of results from our programme of UK-wide public polling delivered in partnership with Ipsos

• This slide deck presents the findings from the fifth wave of our programme of polling conducted between 23 and 29 November 2023, with a total of 2,301 responses from people aged 16 and older across the UK.
   

The results show:

• There is still strong support for all of the NHS’s founding principles, though fewer members of the public think that services should be comprehensive and available to everyone than in 2022.
• If the NHS budget is not increased, the public lean towards wanting the government to prioritise making it easier to access community-based services such as a GP and NHS dentist rather than care in hospitals including A&E and planned procedures.
• The public remains negative about standards of care in the NHS, though they are less pessimistic about changes to standards in the past year than previously, and are more positive about the service that their local NHS is providing.
• The public's favoured option on funding is to increase taxes in order to maintain the level of spending needed to keep the current level of care and services provided by the NHS.
• The public think social care workers are paid too little and support various measures to increase pay, though they think the current funding approach for social care is unfair.
• Increases to the cost of living are impacting some of the public's activities, most notably them keeping their homes at a comfortable temperature.
• The public tend to think the government has the most responsibility for reducing harm from air pollution, food poverty-related harms and fuel poverty, yet the large majority don’t think it is effectively reducing these harms.