Commuting professionals, many of whom have quietly stopped commuting. About six in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Nearly half hold a degree. This is Surrey's working middle, without the Surrey postcard.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 Census, which counts about 35,840 people in about 14,680 households. About 62% of households own their home, around 23% rent privately and about 14% rent from a council or housing association. That leaves Redhill more mixed than the villages around it, where the renter is a rumour. The private-rental share is the flat stock doing its job, housing the people who have not yet found the deposit for a semi.
The typical resident is 38, and about 32% of people are aged 25 to 44. That is a town at the mortgage-and-nursery stage of life rather than the golf-and-cruise stage. Nobody here has time to join the residents' association, and most of them have been asked.
Money is comfortable. Modelled gross household income, before tax, averaged about £73,000 across the area in the financial year to March 2023, which is about £52,000 once tax and housing-independent deductions are accounted for in the net figure. It describes that year, not this one. It is enough for a flat without drama and a house with a spreadsheet.
Households come in every shape. About 29% are one person living alone, and about 10% are a pensioner living alone, which sits inside that single-person share rather than on top of it. About 25% are couples with children and about 10% are lone-parent households. The school gate and the one-bed flat above the shop are both well represented, and the two groups rarely compare notes.
Qualifications lean high. About 46% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 13% have none. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents, so the town has no university crowd to speak of. The graduates are here for the jobs and the trains, not the lectures.
About 308 people live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households, too few to shift any of the shares above.
Redhill's population is one of its better points: settled, educated and earning, with enough renters and single households to stop it turning into a commuter dormitory with a school run attached.