Since it was first published in early 2021, the RBI has demonstrated that access to better jobs, better housing, thriving communities, and strong economic prosperity are the key drivers of levelling up the country and improving people’s lives. These drivers are underpinned by the need for people to be living in good health. Whilst the UK aggregated score on the RBI’s Health Index has remained flat since the last wave of the RBI, the overall score has fallen and inequalities have widened since 2021, with differences linked to income, region and age. The latest RBI Report explores these changes and highlights the importance of a collaborative approach across stakeholders to create the conditions for better health for everyone.

Short-term support and and long-term action are both vital in alleviating the financial pressures households are facing as a result of the cost of living crisis. Pairing immediate support with longer-term action and thinking will help ease current and future financial pressures while also addressing wider social inequalities that exacerbate the impacts of cost-of-living crises. This strategic approach can truly level up the whole of the UK.

This latest edition of the RBI not only outlines the continuing scale of the challenge facing the UK, but is very much intended to act as a blueprint to help the new Government navigate the issue over the coming years to ensure that what action it takes can have the maximum positive impact where and how it is most needed. The recommendations form a self-fulfilling virtuous cycle, where investment in economic infrastructure will positively effect health outcomes, while improving health outcomes will, in turn, positively effect economic output.

The findings in wave 6 of the RBI reveal that the current cost of living crisis presents a real danger of widening the existing inequalities found between and within different parts of the UK. Some of the findings that detail how difficult some households are finding it to cope in the current financial climate make for challenging reading. We must, however, use them to reaffirm how action is urgently needed, at a fundamental and structural level, to ensure we address the root causes of these inequalities and build better equity between our communities and resilience within them.

The critical issue considered in this report is what steps the UK needs to take in order to build healthier infrastructures capable of supporting healthier behaviours in people’s everyday lives. The UK cannot hope to improve health outcomes, a vital prerequisite if we are to truly level up our communities, without considering the need to improve local infrastructure.

Latest research from Legal & General (L&G) demonstrates that efforts to protect UK employment over the previous 12-months have been largely successful, but that far more effort and investment will be required to address wider physical and digital infrastructure and services and level-up the stark disparities seen at a local level.

To mark the COP26 milestone our latest edition of the Rebuilding Britain Index provides a special in depth look not just at the extent to which the UK is building back better, but also how it can look to build back greener. In truth, the two can and should go hand-in-hand.

Our new report shows that building back better has been slow off the line.

Jobs and housing are the factors that most affect quality of life, and investment in these areas must be a priority as the UK levels up.