Bracknell is lived in by people with jobs, mortgages and not much spare time. About six in ten own their home. The typical resident is under forty. Nearly one household in four is a couple with children. It's a town full of people who have somewhere to be by half past eight.
All the population figures on this page come from the 2021 census. About 62% of households own their home, around 16% rent privately and about 20% rent from a social landlord. That's a larger social-rented share than most commuter towns in the area, a legacy of a new town built to house people rather than to sell to them. The private rented sector is modest, so it's not a town full of short tenancies.
The median age is 38, and about 32% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That's a working-age town, not a retirement one. The age profile is set by career stage: people arrive when they need a second bedroom and a reasonable commute, and they stay while the children are at school.
Median gross household income, before tax, was about £69,000 in the Office for National Statistics' modelled figures for the financial year to March 2023. That's a figure from before recent pay rises and price increases, not today's. In a town where so many households are couples, the number usually reflects two salaries.
Households come in the usual shapes of a family town. About 23% are couples with dependent children and about 11% are lone parents with children. The school run takes up a good part of the morning here, whatever the household looks like.
About 27% of households are one person living alone, and around 9% are a single person of pensionable age. The second figure is part of the first, not extra to it. So living alone here is at least as likely to mean someone of working age as an older person. Despite the town's reputation as a place for families, a lot of people here live on their own.
About 34% of residents hold a degree or equivalent, about 14% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Both ends of the range are well represented. There's no university town inside the ring road, which is why the student share is so small.
On health, about 87% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across the Bracknell Forest local authority, which is wider than the town, preventable deaths run better than the England average and smoking is similar to England's. Those are borough figures compared with England, not the town's own, but they point the same way as how residents describe themselves.
Around 557 people live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households. That's too few to change how the other shares should be read.
Bracknell has a stronger mix of residents than most towns of its type, one of the town's strengths. Most people here are working age, working and in reasonable health.