National Travel Survey: England 2022

The National Travel Survey (NTS) is a household survey of personal travel by residents of England travelling within Great Britain, from data collected via interviews and a seven-day travel diary, which enables analysis of patterns and trends. This release covers the main findings from these travel behaviours during 2022. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic from March 2020, has had a substantial impact on travel trends since 2020 and has affected the operation of this survey.

Fieldwork for the NTS 2022 survey continued to be impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, with data collection operating using the same knock-to-nudge method as in 2021 for the first three months of 2022 due to the emergence of the Omicron variant in late 2021. From April onwards, the survey returned to operating a face-to-face methodology with a phone back-up where this was not possible.

The final response rate for NTS 2022 was 31%. This is a fall of seven percentage points since NTS 2021 (38%). This means that the final fully productive sample was 19% lower than 2021 levels (9,971 individuals) with 8,087 individuals participating in the survey in 2022. This was 44% lower than pre-pandemic levels (14,356 individuals responded in 2019). An assessment suggests the drop in response rates between 2021 and 2022 is mainly driven by an increase in the proportion of households who provide some but not all of the requested information, and an increase in the refusal rate. This, along with other factors including a decline in the availability of trained interviewers over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, helps to explain why response rates remain below historic levels.