What are the social problems faced by the UK today?

At Suffolk Coastal Liberal Democrats' recent sessions for Your Liberal Britain, we considered the social problems faced by the UK today. Here is a list (in no particular order) of the main areas of concern that participants identified, and which we think should be accommodated in Liberal Democrat policy:

• housing (in particular, the insufficiency of housing that is truly affordable for the young or for the under-privileged, the high cost of housing, and the legacy of a right-to-buy policy with no replenishment of housing stock)
• social care (in particular, its continued availability, improvement in quality, and desired focus on responding to personal needs and circumstances)
• the differential between the very rich and the very poor, or between the rich and the young; we need to do more for the poor
• mental health
• the NHS, in all its aspects, for all stages of life
• public health, focussed on promoting health and not on treating sickness
• education, since the lack of adequate provision creates a trap condemning people to poor pay and poor employment conditions
• too much focus on academic paths of education, with insufficient provision for apprenticeships and technical training
• young people trapped in a hamster wheel of low earning potential, high housing costs, high debt repayment, a perception of having few prospects, and no hope of financial security
• an ageing population, treated preferentially by current government policy while support for young people is being eroded
• personal economic instability, with people slipping in and out of benefits/employment, and having to rely on food banks
• dilapidated infrastructure in sore need of investment (with investment currently targetted at the wrong projects)
• climate change (there are senses in which this can be considered a social problem)
• perception of immigration, and how to balance it with rural employment needs
• local/regional issues such as the reliance on migrant labour in farming, or coastal erosion, or the impact of holiday homes and second homes on the local housing market
• unnecessary and unreasonable complications in daily life
• increasing deprivation in some areas, leading to people feeling worse off, unempowered and disadvantaged, in a downward spiral of increasing disengagement