This is a town of settled owners in their middle years. Three-quarters of households own their home. Median resident age is 49. Median household income is around £51,000 a year. Not a town for people moving; a town for people who have already moved.
On tenure, roughly three-quarters of households are owner-occupiers, which is a very high share for a south-coast town with a train station in the middle of it. About one in seven households rent privately, and just under one in ten rent from a social landlord. That leaves a rental sector that is small by town standards, and points at a settled, retirement-adjacent character where houses change hands infrequently and the local buy-to-let market is not what powers the property register.
Age-wise, the median resident is 49, which is at the older end of the range for English towns. Only around one adult in five is in the 25-to-44 working-age bracket. That says something specific about the town at street level: fewer buggies, more time in the garden, and a supermarket that sells more mid-range wine than energy drinks. It is not a town without younger adults, but the balance sits at the older end.
Household income lands at about £51,000 a year. That is the profile of a household with one full-time salary and one part-time, or two moderate professional salaries between them, and it is what you would expect from a town where most people own their home outright or with a substantial mortgage-equity balance rather than a large ongoing mortgage.
Household make-up is dominated by smaller households. About one in three homes contains a single person, and roughly one in five is a lone pensioner living alone. Couples with dependent children account for about one in six households. Lone parents account for one in ten. Overcrowding runs at around two percent of households, and unemployment sits at two percent. The town is, in short, made mostly of owner-occupied smaller households, and the people living in them are more likely to be older and settled than young and moving.
Average on the demographic profile at three out of five. This is not a town of extremes. It is a town of ordinary settled owner-occupiers in their fifties, with a comfortable household income and an unusually small rental sector for a place with a train station. If that sounds boring, that is because it is, and it is what most residents came for.