Universal Basic Services: Building public luxury
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This report sets out a transformative vision for Universal Basic Services (UBS) as a foundation for collective flourishing. At a time of deepening crises—economic, ecological, and social—it calls for a new settlement: one in which the state guarantees access to life’s essentials not as a minimum safety net, but as a shared infrastructure of public abundance.
The UK is facing a crisis of unmet needs. Decades of privatisation and underinvestment have left core services—from food and housing to transport and care—fractured, inaccessible, and unequal. The report proposes a universal, publicly funded system of essential services—free at the point of use and organised around human need.
This includes:
• A Public Food Service offering free nutritious meals, shared pantries, and community dining.
• A massive expansion of public housing, alongside the decommodification of existing stock.
• Free local transport and reinvestment in national and rural networks to reconnect people and places.
• A care system that integrates health and social care through local, preventative and community-led models.
• Guaranteed access to information and digital tools, including free broadband, device repair and training.
• A reimagining of culture and leisure as essential, with libraries, lidos, galleries and sports facilities embedded in every community.
www.praeventionstag.de