Mostly working families, and they're younger than most people expect of Sheppey. Just over half own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Few went to university, and plenty left school with nothing. It's a working town that nobody has gentrified.
The 2021 Census counted about 4,300 people in around 1,700 households, and every population figure on this page comes from that census. About 55% of households own their home and about 24% rent privately. The rest are almost all social tenants. So roughly four in ten households rent. Most of the homes are houses, not flats, so renting here usually means a family renting a whole house, not a single person renting a room.
The median age is 36, and about 27% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is a town of people in the years of mortgages, school runs and full-time work. The retirement-coast image some buyers bring with them doesn't match these figures.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income at about £44,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. It is a modelled figure for the area, not a survey of every household, and it describes a few years ago rather than today. It is an ordinary working income, and it is what people here have to pay the mortgage and fill the car with.
About 16% of households are headed by a lone parent, and about 18% are couples with children. Together, that's a large share of the town's households raising children, which fits the town's supply of three-bedroom houses.
About 27% of households are one person living alone, and about 12% are a single pensioner living alone. The pensioners are part of the 27%, not in addition to it. So Queenborough has plenty of families, and a fair number of people on their own.
About 15% of residents hold a degree, and about 30% have no formal qualifications. Only about 1% are full-time students, so there is no college crowd and no student lets. The people here learned their trades in docks, factories and on building sites rather than in lecture halls. That fits a town whose employers over the years have included a steel mill and a pharmaceutical plant. Anyone buying a house here is buying into a working town, and it shows in the shops and the vans parked outside.
On the official measures of deprivation, income and qualifications, Queenborough sits near the bottom, and there's no point pretending otherwise. The people are younger and more often raising families than the island's reputation suggests, but the numbers describe a working town under real pressure.