Peacehaven is a homeowning town where the people who live here mostly bought their houses, and mostly bought them a while ago. Around seven in ten households own the roof over their head. About one in six rents privately. The median resident is 46. Median household income lands around £48,750. This is the demographic profile of a town that got done being new about fifty years ago and has been settling into itself ever since.
On tenure, the split is unusually skewed towards ownership for a coastal town this close to a city. Around seven in ten households own their home, either outright or on a mortgage. About one in six rents privately. About one in ten rents through a social landlord. That combination puts Peacehaven well above the national ownership rate and clearly out of line with the rental-heavy pattern of Brighton up the road. A town where two-thirds of the households have skin in the game votes differently at parish meetings, plants different flowers, and lets its verges grow in more predictable patterns than a town where the same share are renting.
On age, the median resident is 46, which is older than the national mid-forties median but not by much. Around a quarter of residents fall in the 25 to 44 working-age band, which is a modest share for a town this size and reflects the fact that Peacehaven is not the place a young professional lands first. It is the place they land second, when the flat share ends and the mortgage begins. The town's age profile is what you would expect of a coastal grid of post-war houses that priced younger buyers out for two decades and only recently priced them back in.
On income, the typical household earns around £48,750 a year, which is middle-of-the-road for the region and squarely below the wider Sussex average that includes Brighton. It is enough to buy a Peacehaven flat comfortably, a Peacehaven bungalow at a stretch, and a Peacehaven detached with help or a second income. The town's residents are largely people who work locally, work from home, or are retired from working anywhere. Highly-paid commuters are a minority here.
On household make-up, about three in ten households are a single person living alone. About one in six of the town's households is a single pensioner in particular. Around one in six households is a couple with children still at home. Around one in nine is a lone-parent household. Overcrowding runs at around three percent, which is low. The town is heavier on smaller households than the national average, which fits both the age profile and the housing stock, since a lot of the smaller bungalows and flats were designed for exactly this kind of resident.
Overall, Peacehaven scores three out of five on the demographic-and-social profile, which is what a town in the middle of the deprivation deciles looks like, with steady health, steady employment, and steady income. Neither wealthy nor struggling, it sits comfortably in the middle band on every dimension the data measures.