Gillingham belongs to working families in their thirties and forties with a mortgage to pay. About two-thirds own their homes. The typical resident is under 40. A fifth of households are couples with children. There are hardly any students to speak of. It's ordinary in the way most of England is, and it doesn't apologise for it.
About 65% of households own their home. About 23% rent privately and about 11% rent from a social landlord. That puts owners firmly in charge, with enough landlords around for the letting boards to be a permanent fixture on some streets. "Investment potential" in the listing usually means one of those terraces.
The median resident is 39, and about 27% of people are aged 25 to 44. At 39, most people have stopped talking about moving to London and started talking about loft conversions. Gillingham has plenty of people at that stage.
Modelled household income averaged about £56,500 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. It's a snapshot of that year, not today's pay packet. That's enough for a family mortgage on an ordinary house, and nowhere near enough for the adjectives in the more ambitious listings.
The figures on this page come from the 2021 census, covering a population of about 111,000. Couples with children make up about 21% of households and lone parents about 12%. Single-person households account for about 28%, and pensioners living alone about 12%, a group that falls within the single-person figure rather than being added to it. That mix means school-run traffic and a steady number of people living alone, often in the older terraces they bought decades ago.
About 26% of residents hold a degree, about 18% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Both of the first two groups shop at the same Saturday market and argue about the same parking. Gillingham isn't a university town despite the campuses on its old barracks site, and its student share stays small.
About 82% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across the Medway council area as a whole, which covers more than Gillingham, the preventable mortality rate is worse than the England average, while smoking rates are similar to England's. Those are council-area figures measured against England, not a verdict on this particular town, and they shouldn't be read as one.
About 1,900 people live in communal settings such as care homes and halls rather than private households, which is too small to change how the other shares read.
Gillingham's residents add up to a middling town, neither wealthy nor struggling. That suits a buyer who wants neighbours rather than a scene.