Owners, mostly, and more of them living alone than anyone expects. The commonest household here is one person, not a family. Around six in ten own their homes. The median resident is in their early forties. Not a student town, not a retirement town, and nobody has ever moved here for the scene.
About 63% own their homes, about 22% rent privately and about 14% rent from a social landlord. Ownership at that level sets the tempo of a place. People who own tend to stay, and a town where people stay changes slowly whether or not anybody wants it to.
The median age is 41, and about 27% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. That is a working-age town with a settled middle rather than a place people pass through on the way to somewhere with better nightlife.
Median household income before tax came to about £52,700 in the financial year to March 2023, a modelled figure describing that year rather than a live reading of today. After tax the equivalent lands at about £40,100. Neither is worth measuring against whatever national figure you half remember, because most people misremember that one badly and always in the same direction.
Every population figure here comes from the 2021 Census. About 30% of households are one person living alone, and about 13% are a pensioner living alone, that second share sitting inside the first rather than alongside it. About 19% are a couple with children and about 11% are a lone parent with children. The single most common household in the town is somebody on their own, which tells you more about the demand for two-bedroom houses than any estate agent's window will.
On qualifications, about 27% hold a degree, about 19% hold none at all, and about 2% are full-time students. Those three figures describe a mixed workforce rather than a graduate town or a trades town, and none of them predicts a single thing about anybody living here.
More than eight in ten residents describe their own health as good or very good, and about 4% describe it as bad or very bad. Widening out to the local authority, which is where the comparison against England is published, Somerset comes out better than England on preventable mortality and similar to England on smoking, with about 11% of adults smoking. Those are county readings measured against a national benchmark, not the town's own scorecard.
Who lives here is the unremarkable answer: owners in their forties, a great many people living alone, and a workforce divided fairly evenly between degrees and trades. Middling, and entirely comfortable with it, which is more than can be said for places that try harder.