'Chatty Cafes help tackle the loneliness epidemic'

People should be encouraged to share tables in cafes with strangers as a way of tackling an "epidemic" of loneliness, a campaigner has suggested.

Alex Hoskyn, who founded the Chatty Cafe movement, said 700 venues across the UK had already signed up to the idea, helping about 30,000 otherwise isolated people.

Alex, from Uppermill in Oldham, Greater Manchester, said she came up with the idea while on maternity leave in 2016. She said she had been in a cafe, feeling "fed up and lonely".

She said: "There was an elderly lady on another table who looked really fed up and on another table was a guy with disabilities with - I think - his carer. They were just looking around the room."

Alex added: "It struck me in that moment, we could have really helped each other if we'd been sat at one table.

"In our society it's a bit odd to just go up to somebody so I didn't on that day. But it got me thinking about what could have happened if we could have all chatted to each other."

As a result, she started a website and posting on social media.

Alex said she was "amazed" when the first venues started to contact her, asking if they could support the idea.

Since then, the Chatty Cafe scheme has grown to include 600 volunteers who sit at "chatter and natter" tables.

There are also weekly online chatty cafes.

Over the next five years, Alex said she hoped to expand the scheme to 1,000 tables as well as raise £1m.

"We're a really small organisation but we've got big ambitions," she explained.

"We want to train more volunteers. The publicity, the marketing - everything costs money day-to-day.

"Loneliness is an epidemic, it's a national crisis and the more we can give people the opportunity for face-to-face interaction the better."

Widow Anne Barlow started coming to the Just Ice cafe in Poynton, Cheshire, two months ago.

The 82-year-old explained that her husband had died in 2023.

"Initially I had to cope with all that, then eventually you have to start looking at what's available in terms of other people."

Anne said the Chatty Cafe scheme "gives you a lovely focus in the day and you learn things, you learn a lot off other people's experiences and you can share and you go home feeling uplifted.

"When your situation changes in life you realise the value of company, you need other people and much more social interaction than you can possibly have on your own with your cat."

Alex said: "Loneliness can affect anyone at any stage of their life.

"For me as a new mum it was an amazing time and I was really grateful - but it was also very different.

"I'd gone from working and having emails and phone calls and being very busy to just me and a baby and it was a big transition.

"There's been some really amazing stories of people meeting and forming friendships and becoming part of the community.

"It makes me cry every time I talk about it."

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