Guildford is a university town hiding inside a Surrey postcode. Nearly half the adults have a degree. A quarter of homes are privately rented. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Surrey money, running on a student's timetable.
Every figure here comes from the 2021 Census unless it says otherwise. About 58% of households own their home, about 25% rent privately and about 15% rent from a council or housing association. That private-rented share is high for Surrey, and the University of Surrey is most of the reason: student lets and young professionals fill the flats and the terraces near the campus, while the owners sit further up the hill.
The median age is 35, young by the county's standards, and about 26% of residents are aged 25 to 44. The students pull the average down, but they're not the whole story. Guildford also has the graduates who stayed, the young couples with first mortgages and the families in their second house. The pensioners are here too. They're outnumbered.
The Office for National Statistics modelled the average household income at about £70,600 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. It's a gross figure, before tax and national insurance take their share, and it describes that year rather than today. Even so, it's a lot of money going into a lot of households, and it goes some way to explaining how the housing market holds up the way it does.
About 28% of households are one person living alone, and about 11% are a pensioner living alone, a group counted inside that single-person figure rather than on top of it. About 22% are couples with children, and about 8% are lone parents. That's a town split between flats full of people starting out, houses full of families mid-school-run, and bungalows where the children left some time ago.
About 46% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, and about 10% have no formal qualifications. Around 5% are recorded as full-time students, but that measure counts only students who are also working or looking for work, so it misses most of the ones on campus. Guildford has more students than that figure admits, and anyone who's been in town during freshers' week will know it.
Of the 80,197 residents, 6,115 live in communal accommodation such as halls of residence and care homes, leaving 74,082 in private households. That's a modest share, but it's the university's share, so it's worth bearing in mind when the age and renting figures look young for Surrey.
Guildford is younger, better qualified and better paid than most towns its size, with a student population that keeps it from settling into middle age. That's one of the more interesting mixes in the county, and one of its real advantages.