For 40 minutes an elderly man sat on a bench in a busy city centre park – alone.

He was ignored by the passing dog walkers, joggers, parents with pushchairs and teenagers with headphones, all too busy to even say “hello”.

Did he want company? Did he want to be alone? Did anyone actually care?

It was enough to move one woman to try and get strangers to chat, helping inspire a movement that has spread across the world.

“There was some of that British reserve that made me think he may think me weird if I sat next to him,” said Allison Owen-Jones, 53, from Cardiff.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple way to let people know you’re open to a chat, I thought.

“So I came up with the idea of tying a sign that would open the avenues for people. I didn’t want it to sound too vulnerable so I wrote, ‘Happy to chat bench. Sit here if you don’t mind someone stopping to say hello’.

“All of a sudden, you’re not invisible anymore.”

The idea in May this year led Allison to laminate cards and begin tying them to benches in parks around her home city.

It was a blissfully simple idea to tackle loneliness that swiftly created a buzz.

The Senior Citizen Liaison Team charity took the idea a step further.

It has already set up partnerships with both Avon and Somerset Police and Gwent Police to have permanent benches across their areas and arrange volunteers to “chat-bench”.

A coffee caravan in rural Suffolk, furniture restoration projects for men and organised rambles for the recently bereaved are among more than a hundred initiatives being backed with a £11.5m fund to tackle the epidemic of loneliness.

One hundred and twenty-six projects have been chosen to receive up to £100,000 each in the first ever government-backed fund to tackle a problem that the prime minister, Theresa May, described as “incredibly damaging to our humanity” when she launched a national loneliness strategy in October.

The projects will target a wide range of groups across England from isolated Pakistani women in Bradford to young LGBTQ+ in Bristol and lonely elderly men in Cornwall.

The government believes the health impact of loneliness is on a par with obesity and smoking. It says loneliness is associated with a greater risk of smoking, coronary heart disease and stroke as well as an increased risk of depression, low self-esteem, sleep problems and Alzheimer’s disease.

Theresa May has appointed one of her ministers to lead on issues connected to loneliness, implementing one of the main recommendations of a report into the subject by the Jo Cox Commission.

Tracey Crouch, the minister for sport and civil society, will head a government-wide group with responsibility for policies connected to loneliness, Downing Street said.

In parallel, the government said it would develop a wider strategy on the issue, gather more evidence and statistics, and provide funding for community groups to start activities which connect people.

The move follows a cross-party report by the commission set up in honour of Cox, the Labour MP murdered by a rightwing extremist in 2016, who had campaigned about loneliness.

May is expected to formally announce the appointment on Wednesday, and to say that she has accepted many of the recommendations from the commission. She will also host a Downing Street reception in honour of Cox’s work.

Citing research saying that 9 million people often or always feel lonely, the prime minister said: “For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life.

“I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones – people who have no one to talk to or share their thoughts and experiences with.”

A study published today finds that disconnected communities could be costing the UK economy £32bn every year. The research, commissioned by the Eden Project’s neighbourhood initiative, The Big Lunch, which receives £1m-£2m a year from the Big Lottery Fund, reveals the annual cost to public services of social isolation and disconnected communities, including demand on health services and policing.

The study found that far from just being a symptom of old age, loneliness and social isolation affected a broad range of people: “[There are] key triggers that can disrupt lives and create a situation in which loneliness becomes the norm,” the report says. “[These] include becoming a new mum at a young age, facing empty nest syndrome or retirement, experiencing long-term health issues or mobility limitations, dealing with bereavement or going through a family breakdown, such as divorce or separation.”

According to the Office for National Statistics, Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe. We’re less likely to know our neighbours than residents anywhere else in the EU, and a high proportion of the population have no one to rely on in a crisis. It’s more than simply feeling lonely – research shows that isolation can have huge knock-on effects on both mental and physical health, which is one of the reasons why social isolation is costing the UK so much money.

According to the research, which was carried out by the consultancy the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), disconnected communities are also linked to a loss of productivity, with a net cost to the economy of about £12bn every year, based on previous research that found happiness could be associated with a 12% rise in productivity.