Larkfield is home to people who have made their big decisions and are now paying them off. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. More households are one person living alone than a couple with children. It is a settled suburb of mortgages, school runs and people who stay put.
The 2021 Census counted about 27,950 people in 11,296 households, and every population figure here comes from it. About 70% of households own their home. Private renting accounts for only about 10%, with social renting at about 19%. Larkfield is where people buy, and the landlords have found slimmer pickings than in the towns either side.
The median resident is 42, and about 25% of people are aged 25 to 44. That makes Larkfield neither a young professionals' town nor a retirement enclave. It is the age at which the pub quiz team becomes a parents' evening rota.
Household income was modelled at about £63,600 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area. It is a gross figure from a few years ago, not a current salary survey. It still describes households with two incomes and a mortgage, not people counting coins at the checkout.
About 22% of households are couples with dependent children, and about 11% are lone-parent households. Nearly a quarter, about 24%, are one person living alone, and that includes the 13% of households who are a single pensioner. Those shares describe a place people move to for the family years and then stay in long after the children leave, which accounts for the gap between the three-bedroom houses and the number of people inside them.
About 26% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 18% have no formal qualifications and only about 1% are full-time students. It is a mix of people who went to university and people who went straight into work. There is no student quarter, and no shared house with a sofa in the front garden.
The census counts just 31 people living in communal settings such as care homes, so the figures above describe private households almost entirely.
Larkfield's residents are comfortably off, settled and mostly owners, and that stability is one of the area's quieter strengths. The only people unlikely to fit in are anyone who wants to move on within two years.