Society Watch

Providing a snapshot of what life is like for people in Britain today.

In 2020, coinciding with its 50th anniversary, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) launched the first in its series of Society Watch insights, drawing together new and existing research from across multiple sources and organisations to shed light on people's lives and our society. The aim of this research is to provide a useful snapshot of what life is like for people in the UK today. 

Society Watch focuses on a particularly hot topic, examining key themes from the evidence presented in more detail. Previous research has covered mental health, the social legacy of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

  • Previous Society Watch events have been kindly sponsored by UKRI/Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation.
  • We welcome any funding interest for our future reports and events. For more information, please get in touch at comms@natcen.ac.uk.
  • A key outcome of Society Watch is the engagement and impact we achieve with both policy stakeholders and the media.
  • The findings of our previous reports were featured in the media, most notably on BBC's Newsnight, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and ITV Peston. 

Society Watch: Delivering the Government's Devolution Revolution

This latest policy briefing paper, published in May 2025 as part of the Society Watch series, provides insights into public attitudes towards devolution. In December 2024, the UK Government unveiled its plans to decentralise power, publishing the English Devolution White Paper, to support select areas in accelerating their move towards devolution. 

We convened a deliberative workshop with residents of Sussex to explore how they wanted their new combined authority to function, and to test a model for how further devolution deliberations could be carried out. Sussex was selected as a case study because it’s due to experience some of the biggest changes, going from very low levels of devolved power to the creation of a new combined authority. 

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