West Drayton is mostly young working adults, and most of them rent. More households rent than own. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Few are students. It is a town of people at work, with plenty of children about.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 Census, which counted 39,156 residents in 14,044 households. About 41% of households own their home. About 32% rent privately and 25% rent from a council or housing association. Landlords of one kind or another hold more of the keys to West Drayton's front doors than the people who live behind them.
The median age is 34, and about 35% of residents are between 25 and 44. That is a population in its working and child-rearing years. The parish that Tudor courtiers retired to and died in is now one of the younger corners of the borough.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income at around £68,600 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods. That is gross household income for a year that has already passed, so it describes a household's earnings before tax and three years of rising prices, and most households take home a good deal less. In a town where so many households pay rent, much of that money goes to a landlord before it goes anywhere else.
Families with children are a large part of the town. About 23% of households are couples with children, and about 16% are lone parents with children. Between them, close to four households in ten have children at home.
The remaining households are spread across the usual mix. About 24% of households are one person living alone, and within that, about 7% are pensioners living alone. With so many families and so many younger adults living alone, older people are a smaller part of the picture. Most of the school-gate conversation here happens before eight in the morning, because most of the parents have a shift to get to.
About 36% of residents aged 16 and over hold a degree or higher, about 21% have no formal qualifications, and only about 3% are full-time students. That makes for a wide spread, from professionals commuting into London to people in hands-on jobs closer to home, and very few students in between. There is no university crowd here, and the young people on the streets are mostly going to work.
About 85% of residents described their health as good or very good at the 2021 Census. Across the London Borough of Hillingdon, the rate of preventable deaths is better than the England average, and smoking is at a similar level to England as a whole. Those are borough-wide comparisons, and they cover far more than West Drayton.
West Drayton is a young, hard-working, mostly renting town with more stretched households than its incomes suggest. A buyer hoping for long-settled streets of owner-occupiers will find a different mix here.