This is when Eastbourne Herald readers think life will return to normal after the pandemic

Our lockdown survey, published on the Eastbourne Herald as well as 150 others across the UK last week, asked readers 25 questions about how the coronavirus crisis has shaped the lives, opinions and habits of people in Eastbourne - and what they’d like to see happen in the coming weeks and months.

One of the questions in the survey focused on what comes next - asking readers when they think everyday life will return to some kind of normality.

Today we can reveal how readers in Eastbourne answered.

The majority of Herald readers - 39% - said they thought it would take 1-2 years for everyday life to return to normal, with 35% of readers thinking it would take 6-12 months.

Meanwhile 7% thought it might take just 3-5 months.

Some were less optimistic, with 5% thinking it would take 3-5 years and less than 1% choosing ‘6+ years’, while 8% said ‘There will not be a return to normality’.

On a national level, 39.4% of respondents said they thought it would take 1-2 years for everyday life to return to normality, while 34.2% were more optimistic, saying it would take 6-12 months for this to happen.

Just 8.4% think this will happen in 3-5 months, and only a tiny percentage of respondents - 5.9% - think it’ll take between 3-5 years, while 8.54% said that they think things will not return to normal.

When asked what they thought the likely outcomes of the coronavirus outbreak would be, the majority of readers in Eastbourne said they thought there would be greater funding for the NHS (60%).

Other likely outcomes were society placing greater value on key workers (59%) followed by communities coming closer together (40%).

On a national level, a high number of respondents - 58.9% - think greater funding for the NHS will be a likely outcome, followed closely by society placing greater value on key workers, which 56.6% of respondents thought would happen post-pandemic.

Even the least popular option - “the country coming closer together” - was seen as a likely outcome by 18.8% of respondents.

A message from the Editor, Gary Shipton:

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news, I am asking you to please purchase a copy of our newspapers.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspapers.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

Stay safe, and best wishes.