Staines is a town of mortgage-payers in early middle age, earning decent money and getting on with it. Two in three households own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. Nearly four in ten adults have a degree. The student years, and most of the drama that comes with them, happen somewhere else.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 Census, which counted 24,245 people in 10,244 households across the town. About 67% of households own their home, outright or with a mortgage. About 22% rent privately and about 11% rent from a council or housing association. Ownership is the default, and the private rented flats around the centre are where the town keeps its newcomers until they buy.
The median age is 42, and about 28% of residents are between 25 and 44. That is a town weighted towards people in the thick of careers and school runs, with the twenties thinner than the forties. Staines has the gravel islands, the station and the shops of a younger place and the age profile of a steadier one.
Household income averaged about £66,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, an Office for National Statistics model across the town's neighbourhoods, which comes to about £47,000 once tax is taken off. It is the kind of income that holds a Surrey mortgage comfortably on two salaries and anxiously on one.
Lone-parent households make up about 9% of the total, a figure that sits inside a broader mix of couples, single people and families.
That mix spreads fairly evenly. About 29% of households are one person living alone, and within that group about 12% of all households are a pensioner living alone. Couples with children account for about 21% of households. The single-person share is high enough to explain the flats and low enough that the semis still go to families. The pensioners living alone are counted inside the single-person figure, so the two should never be added together.
Qualifications cover a wide range. About 39% of adults hold a degree or equivalent and about 14% hold no formal qualifications at all. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents. Royal Holloway is just across the river near Egham, and Staines leaves the student years to the other bank.
A further 256 people live in communal settings such as care homes, too few to change how any of the household shares above should be read.
Staines is home to a well-qualified, owner-occupying population in the middle of working life, and that steady base is one of the better things about the town.