Cinderford is mostly middle-aged homeowners in an ordinary working town. Two-thirds own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Retired people living alone are about as common as couples bringing up children. It's a place where people tend to stay put, and it has fewer young newcomers than its house prices might attract.
The 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, counted 11,363 people across 5,051 households in Cinderford. About 67% own their home, about 16% rent from a private landlord and about 16% rent from the council or a housing association. Private landlords and social landlords have almost exactly the same share of the town.
The typical resident is 45, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 23% of the population. The 25-to-44s are around, but people who were 25-to-44 a couple of decades ago outnumber them.
Household income across the area was about £46,000 a year before tax in the financial year to March 2023, an estimate the Office for National Statistics models across the wider neighbourhood. It's a figure for the whole household and not anyone's salary. No national comparison is given here, because a gross, modelled household figure is easy to set against the wrong benchmark.
About 32% of households are one person living alone, and about 16% are a single pensioner living alone, which is part of that same group. Couples with children make up about 17% and lone parents about 11%. That puts pensioners living alone almost level with couples raising children, so the school run and the visit to an elderly parent take up much the same share of the town's time.
About 22% of residents hold a degree, about 23% have no formal qualifications and about 1% are full-time students. The town has almost as many people with degrees as with no qualifications at all. Very few students live here: Cinderford is a place people live and work, and it isn't somewhere people come to study.
Cinderford's population profile is on the weaker side of average: a stable, home-owning, middle-aged town on modest incomes, without the wealth or the young professionals that the more affluent places tend to have.