Folkestone is mostly ordinary working households, not the artists the regeneration brochures feature. Just over half own their home. About a third rent privately. The typical resident is in their early forties. The arts scene is real, but it's a small part of who lives here.
All the figures here come from the 2021 Census, apart from income, which is modelled separately. About 54% of households own their home, about 32% rent privately and about 13% rent from a council or housing association. So nearly half the town rents, far more than the seaside-retirement image would suggest. A lot of the grand Victorian terraces have been split into flats and let out one floor at a time.
The median age is about 41, and about 26% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That's younger than the common idea of the Kent coast as a place people retire to.
Median household income was about £52,700 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, as modelled by the Office for National Statistics. That covers the whole household, not one person's pay, and it's a figure from a few years back rather than today. It describes a working town. It isn't wealthy, and it isn't struggling either.
About 36% of households are one person living alone, and about 15% are pensioners living alone, who are counted within that 36%. Couples with dependent children make up about 17% of households and lone parents about 12%. So one-person homes are more common than families, which fits a town with this many flats. If you're house-hunting with children, most of the other families will be in the semis on the edge of town rather than in the flats.
About 28% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 19% have no formal qualifications. Only about 2% are full-time students, so the town has no big student population. It has a mix of qualifications, like most working towns, and doesn't fit the arts-quarter image.
Of the town's population of about 53,000, 1,077 people live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households. That's too few to change how the figures above should be read.
On the usual measures, Folkestone's population profile sits below the middle. It's a working town with modest incomes and a lot of renters, which is less polished than the seafront suggests and more honest than the brochures.