Berrylands is home to people in the middle of their working lives who own a house and plan to stay in it. Six in ten own their home. Half have a degree. Nearly nine in ten say their health is good. The typical resident is just under forty. Most people here have finished studying, paid the deposit and are now paying off the mortgage.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 census, which counted about 24,100 people in 9,636 households across Berrylands. About 62% of households own their home. About 27% rent privately and 10% rent from a council or housing association. Owners outnumber private renters by more than two to one, though the landlord market is still big enough to keep a steady flow of new arrivals coming through the flats.
The typical resident is about 39, and about 29% of the population is aged 25 to 44. Berrylands is not a retirement suburb, and it is not a student one either. Most people are somewhere between their first mortgage and their children's university applications.
The Office for National Statistics models average household income in Berrylands at about £88,000 before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That is the number on the payslip, not the one in the bank, and it is now a few years old. A household earning it is comfortable, and still finds a semi-detached house a big step.
About 29% of households are one person living alone, and about 12% of all households are a single pensioner, which counts towards that same 29%. Couples with dependent children make up about 23% of households, and lone parents about 8%. The rest are mainly couples without children at home, including those whose children have grown up and moved out. The semis were built with families in mind. Today they also hold a lot of empty-nesters and people living alone.
About 50% of adults have a degree, about 11% have no qualifications, and about 3% are full-time students. Graduates are the largest single group, with a sizeable share at the other end. Students are a small presence, unusually so for somewhere this close to a university's sports ground.
About 87% of residents described their health as good or very good in the census. For the wider Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Public Health England's benchmarks put deaths from preventable causes better than the England average and smoking about the same. Those are borough-wide figures compared against England. They describe Kingston as a whole, not the streets of Berrylands.
About 460 people live in communal settings such as care homes, a small number against the rest of the population. It makes no real difference to how the shares above should be read.
The population is one of Berrylands' real strengths: mostly healthy, well qualified homeowners in the middle of their working lives. They stay put long enough to know which neighbour has the ladder.