In mid-November Rishi Sunak was asked in a Channel 4 interview to name one public service that “was working, adequately, working properly”.

The prime minister didn’t give a direct answer. But the exchange feeds into an ever-more-common discourse: that the UK is facing “polycrisis” in almost every facet of life in Britain. From courts to the cost of living, transport to healthcare, environment to the asylum system – everywhere appears to be affected.

As the prime minister faces what he, his government and the public-at-large hopes will be a better 2023, we look at some of the many political problems that marked 2022.

Inflation

For most people living in the UK, 2022 has been marked by one word. Inflation has pushed up the price of almost everything with food, clothing, energy bills, rents and interest rates all affected.

The data shows what the families forced to choose between heating and eating already know: rising domestic fuel and energy prices have pushed consumer inflation rates to levels last seen in the 1970s.

The NHS

With the turn of 2022 came the realisation that the worst of the Covid pandemic had passed and the hope that this, in turn, would allow the NHS to recover from the unprecedented pressures it faced as a result.

However, there has been little letup on services all over the UK. In England the number of people on waiting lists reached a new record high for two years running in October, exceeding 7.2 million, yet another record high, with almost 2 million more across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

It is far from the only pressure being brought to bear on the health service. As many as one in three beds in some trusts are occupied by patients who are medically fit to go home but cannot be discharged because they have nowhere suitable to go.

Fiscal and political chaos

There has arguably never been a misnomer as expensive as Kwasi Kwarteng’s so-called mini-budget, which is estimated to have cost the country a staggering £30bn.

The resulting political fallout meant that Rishi Sunak became the third prime minister in 50 days. The prime ministerial churn has only been outdone by those of their ministers in recent years.

Between 1997 and 2010, the average tenure of six key ministries – Home, Health, Treasury, Education, Foreign and Justice – stood at 1,057 days.

Post-Brexit turmoil, three reshuffles under Boris Johnson, his eventual resignation and the chaotic nature of Liz Truss’s tenure have all contributed to bringing the Conservative’s average ministerial tenure in these positions to just 588 days, or 44% less.

Asylum backlog

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, would have it that the UK faces an “invasion” of immigrants, but the true scandal was revealed at Manston amid concerns that it was dangerously overcrowded.

The immigration centre in Kent opened in January 2022 and was designed to hold 1,600 people for no more than 24 hours. But in November there were 4,000 people there, 2.5 times over its capacity.

The British Red Cross said that problems at Manston “are indicative of the wider issues facing the asylum system”.

The asylum processing backlog rose by 71% in a year and it is now almost twice that of the last pre-Covid year (2019). Three-quarters of those waiting for an initial decision had been waiting more than six months at the end of June.

Climate emergency

The world is “very, very close to irreversible changes”, Prof Johan Rockström, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, said in October after key UN reports about not enough progress to avoid a climate catastrophe.

This is not a UK-only crisis, but the country has broken several climate-related records this year.

2022 is on the way to becoming, if not the warmest, one of the warmest years on record. The annual mean temperature between January and November in the UK was 10.7C, the highest so far.

The UK registered a temperature more than 40C for the first time this summer, contributing to the deaths for more than 2,800 people aged 65 and over in England, the highest number since the heatwave plan was put in place in 2004.

Justice delayed

The backlog in the justice system is still far above pre-pandemic levels, the legacy of not just court closures during lockdown, but also an overstretched and underfunded justice system after 10 years of legal aid cuts and court closures.

The crown court criminal waiting list stood at more than 62,000 at the end of September, up from just over 32,000 in March 2019, while the magistrates court backlog stood at more than 358,000 – up from 304,000. Family courts are also experiencing a large backlog of cases.

The government aims to reduce the crown courts backlog to 53,000 by March 2025.

A wave of strikes

For the first time in 106 years, nurses from the Royal College of Nursing took the decision to strike in December. But they are not the only workers demanding a pay rise to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living.

University staff, postal workers, firefighters, security workers, bus drivers, railway workers and UK Border Force staff have also announced strikes for the end of the year, with an average of almost one strike a day in December.

Rail chaos

The number of rail cancellations has reached its highest level on record – with services in the north of England particularly affected.

That’s only counting those trains cancelled within 24 hours of departure, which appear on the official figures collated by the Office for Rail and Road (ORR). Separate figures obtained by the Guardian show some operators are vastly under-reporting their number of cancellations, by preemptively removing trains from the timetable.

In the 12 weeks to 12 November, Avanti West Coast – which runs services between London, Manchester and Glasgow – timetabled just 57% of the services it did in 2019. About one in 13 of those then went on to be cancelled on the day.