Egham is two towns sharing one boundary: a settled commuter town of owners and a university town of students. Nearly six in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their early thirties, thanks largely to the campus. Incomes are comfortable. The students change every three years and the semis stay put.
At the 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure here, about 57% of Egham's households owned their home and about 26% rented privately, with social renting making up most of the rest at about 16%. The private-rental share is where the university shows itself first, since a good deal of that market is let to students by the room.
The typical Egham resident is about 32 years old, and about 23% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That median is pulled sharply down by Royal Holloway at Englefield Green, inside this boundary, and the owner-occupied streets would come out older on their own. A town where the median resident has just finished paying off a student loan is mostly a town with a large number of people taking one out.
The Office for National Statistics modelled gross household income, before tax, at about £67,000 for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is a few years old and averages the comfortable homeowners with the households of students, and gross is always the more cheerful of the two numbers on a payslip.
Household make-up follows the same split. About 28% of households are one person living alone, and about 12% are pensioners living alone, who are counted within that same group. Couples with dependent children make up about 19% of households and lone parents about 9%. Egham has families, but not so many that the school run defines the place.
About 34% of residents hold a degree or equivalent and about 12% have no formal qualifications. The census counts about 8% as full-time students, but that measure only includes students who were also working or looking for work, so it misses most of those who were simply studying and badly understates the real student population here.
Of Egham's 29,766 residents, 3,260 live in communal establishments, mostly student halls, while the other 26,506 live in private households. That makes Egham a place with a second population that moves in each autumn and out each summer, and it shapes the age, renting and household figures across the board. Read any Egham statistic with that in mind, because the halls tilt nearly every share on this page.
Egham is home to a well-off, well-educated mix, with homeowners and students side by side, and it works better for both than either tends to expect.