The founder of the Happy to Chat bench initiative has suggested that NHS GP surgeries could “adopt a bench nearby” to help tackle loneliness.
Richmond already has 15 dedicated benches and social prescribing link workers operating from the same GP surgeries.
Allison Owen-Jones, who started the movement in Cardiff in 2019, said GPs could casually mention the benches to patients who might be isolated, rather than relying on formal referrals alone.
“GP surgeries could possibly adopt a bench nearby and suggest to people, there’s a bench out there,” she said.
“Why don’t you sit on it for five minutes and see if anyone stops?”
But she was clear it must never feel like a prescription.
“Definitely don’t say that you have to do it, like taking your medicine,” she said.
“If someone actually said, right, no, what you should do now is sit on that bench for half an hour every day — it’d be awful.
“It could be like when you go to a meeting and they say, could you say a few words about yourself to the group?”
One of her most poignant stories suggested the idea was already working — by accident.
In 2021, a Muslim woman in Cardiff whose GP had told her to exercise more began walking alone around a lake. She was self-conscious about going out by herself in her headscarf.
She then sat on a Happy to Chat bench.
“She was surprised that everybody talked to her like she was everybody else,” Owen-Jones said. “It had made her more socially confident.”
Owen-Jones also spoke of a widowed woman who, after losing her husband, found herself returning to the same bench every day.
“She wouldn’t have known how she would have gone on if she hadn’t gone to that bench every day and talked to different people,” Owen-Jones said.
Owen-Jones started the movement after watching an elderly man sit alone for 40 minutes in a Cardiff park. She made a sign reading: “Sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello.”
Her son tweeted it. It went viral.
There are now more than 700 Happy to Chat benches across the UK and in dozens of countries.
The housing charity Anchor has separately installed 930 “chatty benches” nationally, with plans to reach 1,000. An Anchor spokesperson confirmed there was no formal link to NHS social prescribing.
Richmond Council confirmed the borough has 15 “acts of kindness” benches across all its wards as part of its Friendly Parks for All programme.
The borough also has social prescribing link workers in GP surgeries who refer isolated patients to community activities.
Owen-Jones said the benches work because they carry no stigma.
“It could be both ways,” she said. “The person on the bench could be perfectly fine, and happy for anyone to sit down who’s feeling lonely. Or the person who joins them could see somebody sitting there who wanted a chat.
“It’s not like you’ve got a label saying ‘lonely.’ It could be either way.”
Professor Jill Litt of the University of Colorado Boulder, who leads a global nature-based social prescribing experiment, described nature as being “very good at making people ready for change, vulnerable — and open to new experiences”.
Owen-Jones said the benches needed no formal programme to work.
“Even if you don’t say a word about what’s wrong with you, just talking to somebody else will make them feel better,” she said. “Because they matter.”
Richmond Council’s acts of kindness benches are listed here.
Featured image credit: CC0 Public Domain
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