Bexley Council is planning to spend more than £1.6 million on tackling loneliness in adults.

Funding has been given by the council to tackle “social isolation” in the borough.

The council won a bid from the Local Government Association to fund prevention initiates, focusing on social isolation before rolling out services.

Cllr Brad Smith said at a Council meeting on Wednesday: “We are allocating £1.65m of the adult services budget to support voluntary and community sectors that work with us on prevention initiatives that will reduce adult social care pressures.

“The intention is to achieve good outcomes to commission services by smaller organisations that don’t usually receive commissioning so they’re involved with care and this will fund new services for interventions.”

According to figures published by the Office for National Statistics, 2.4 million adult British residents – of all ages – suffer from chronic loneliness.

Stats also show that young adults are 10 per cent more likely to feel lonely than the older generation.

Cllr Smith went on: “There are three phases of work. Phase one is grant funded priority projects to tackle loneliness and isolation, independence for 17 to 20- year-olds with ADHD and ADD and improving employment outcomes with adults with mental ill health.”

Phases two and three are co-designing projects for the voluntary sectors and producing projects for the community.

Cllr Smith said: “These projects should reduce the need for adult social care and be sustainable beyond this initial funding.”

Experts have said that one reason young people feel increasingly lonely nationally is because they rent in areas and feel no sense of belonging to the community.