Barnstaple is lived in by the people who run North Devon rather than by the people who retired to it. Six in ten own their homes. A third of households are one person on their own. The typical resident is in their mid forties, working, and not commuting anywhere far. Devon's coast is full of towns that emptied out into holiday lets and pension income. This is the one that stayed a working town, and the population figures show it in every direction.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census. About 61% of households own their home, roughly 21% rent privately and around 17% rent from a social landlord. That social rented share is the one that distinguishes Barnstaple from the postcard villages around it: this is a town with council-built estates as well as Victorian terraces, and both are part of the housing market rather than an afterthought to it.
The median age is 44, and about 25% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. That is a genuinely mixed age profile rather than the top-heavy one that coastal Devon usually produces, and it means the schools, the college and the care homes are all busy at the same time.
On income, modelled household income for the area came out at about £46,700 gross before tax in the financial year to March 2023, with net household income around £36,000 after tax. Those describe that year rather than today, and they are modelled averages across the area rather than a survey of anyone's payslip. They are also the number that makes the local housing market work: ordinary earnings against ordinary prices is an increasingly unusual combination in the South West.
Household composition is where the town gets more interesting than its market-town reputation suggests. About 33% of households are a single person living alone, and roughly 16% of all households are a pensioner living alone, which is a subset of that first figure rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children account for about 17% of households and lone-parent households about 11%. A town where a third of front doors open onto one person is not the family-suburb picture most buyers arrive with, and it explains a good deal about the demand for smaller properties.
On qualifications, about 26% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and around 19% hold none. Full-time students make up about 2% of the population, which is what a tertiary college produces rather than a university town. The mix is broad rather than concentrated at either end, which is what you would expect of a place where the hospital, the council, the college and the retail parks are all major employers in the same square mile.
Only 231 people in the area live in communal establishments such as care homes or halls rather than in private households, so the household shares above describe more or less everybody.
Barnstaple is an ordinary town in the most literal sense, and its population profile sits below the national middle on prosperity rather than above it. Anyone shopping for an affluent enclave with a Devon postcode will find one about forty minutes away and pay accordingly. Anyone who wants a town where the people who work in it can also afford to live in it has found the right place.