Billericay is mostly homeowners in their forties and fifties, comfortably paid and planning to stay. About eight in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Couples with children and people living alone turn up in roughly equal numbers.
All of the population figures here come from Census 2021, which counted about 34,800 people in about 14,300 households. About 82% of households own their home, about 11% rent privately and about 7% rent socially. In Billericay, the person who owns the house is almost always the person asleep in it.
The typical resident is 45, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 23% of the population. That makes the town older than a commuter town's reputation suggests, and it shows in the housing, where most people have long stopped looking for a starter home. The typical resident is at the age when people stop moving house and start extending the one they've got.
The Office for National Statistics models household income before tax at about £73,500 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the six small statistical areas that make up the town. That is a figure from a few years back, and gross. It is comfortable money that sounds bigger than the monthly payslip it turns into.
About 27% of households are one person living alone, and pensioners living alone make up about 15% of all households, counted within that 27%. Couples with dependent children make up about 24% of households, and lone parents about 8%. The town divides almost evenly between the house with a school run and the house with one person in it, and the High Street serves both.
About 32% of residents aged 16 and over have a degree, and about 14% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 1%, so very few residents here are students. The town's children grow up here and then mostly go somewhere else to study.
Billericay's residents are established, financially secure and in no hurry to leave, and that is one of the town's real strengths. If you want neighbours who will still be there in ten years, this is the kind of place that delivers them.