While government restrictions on religious freedom are low, according to the Pew Forum’s latest assessment, social hostilities remain high – even though levels of social hostilities fell from the previous analysis. The UK is one of only five democratic states to show this level of violence against religious groups and their members. According to Home Office data, 56 percent of hate crimes in England and Wales were “recorded as… racially or religiously aggravated offences”, equating to approximately 58,850 offences between March 2019 and March 2020; an increase of 4,280 compared with the previous twelve months. The Home Office also published data on provisional trends in racially or religiously aggravated offences occurring under COVID-19 restrictions for up to July 2020. While the level of such offences was lower than 2019 during March-May, the period covered by the UK’s first lockdown, both January-February 2020 and June-July saw a rise in offences of this type compared with the same periods in 2019. In Scotland, there were 660 religiously aggravated charges reported in 2019-20, an increase of 24 percent compared to 2018-19. The problem of sectarianism is still an issue in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Police Service of Northern Ireland reported 888 sectarian motivated incidents in the 12 months to the end of March 2020 – and another 46 non-sectarian incidents recorded as being religiously motivated.