When I returned home to Witney from London last Christmas, I quickly noticed a story in The Oxford Times when I sat down to relax in the living room: ‘call to reach out to the lonely during Christmas'.

It is tragic that so many people have to spend the festive period alone, but from my work in the capital, I was not surprised.

At The Challenge, a charity for building a more socially-integrated society, we are well aware of the disconnection and isolation that many people across the country feel, and the need to bring people from all ages and backgrounds together to help combat this.

Recently, at the University of Bath, I helped launch a report I wrote on ‘Healing the Generational Divide’, alongside a parliamentary panel of more than 20 MPs and Lords from different political parties.

We have worked with the MPs, led by Liberal Democrat Chuka Umunna, for more than a year to understand the current generational divides and devise ways to strengthen connections between them.

If we can create a Britain in which different generations live interconnected lives, we will not only give ourselves a much better chance of tackling loneliness - in younger people as well as the old - but also help reduce the ageist prejudice and stereotyping that has characterised so much of the Brexit debate.

Our polling shows three-quarters of younger remain voters think older people are prejudiced, while the same percentage of older leave voters think young people are entitled and unwilling to work hard.

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Many are willing to sacrifice the economic wellbeing of other generations to get their own way on Brexit. One Conservative MP recently told me that when door-knocking during the EU referendum, she spoke to older voters about the damage Brexit would do to the fortunes of the next generation, and many simply replied: “I don’t care.”

The same self-interest applies to young people: we found that one in four remain voters aged 18-34 would accept pension reductions for older people to stop Brexit.

These political divides have been well-documented, but our inquiry has shown that different generations are increasingly divided both geography and socially.

Younger people tend to live in urban centres, while older people predominantly reside in rural places.

Even when different generations live in the same city, this can be in separate areas.

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The decline in shared spaces, such as community centres and libraries, has only made it harder to bring different ages together in a common setting.

So how do we overcome this? Our report includes plans to help local intergenerational projects bring young and old together through art, music, sport and more.

Other proposals include housing developments connecting different generations; nurseries, schools and care homes working together, and technology and social media strengthening connections.

One of our more eye-catching recommendations was picked up by six national newspapers: to introduce a 1p charge on self-service checkouts to raise £30m for regional intergenerational projects.

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The aim is to counteract the decreasing amount of human contact between different age groups that such technology is bringing.

There is no silver bullet to solve the issue and our ideas are only part of the picture.

Building stronger intergenerational connections will not solve Brexit, but it will create more trust and understanding.

We can then draw on real-life friendships with people of other ages to break down the stereotypes that they have held from afar.

This will not only be a huge boost for our politics, but for each and every one of us in our personal lives.

As that story in The Oxford Times reminded us, loneliness is all too prevalent, and stronger intergenerational ties lie at the heart of tackling it.