About 28,000 people live in Witham, and most of them are working-age homeowners with somewhere to be on a weekday morning. About six in ten own their home. About a fifth rent from a social landlord. The typical resident is 39. Three households in ten are one person living alone. It is a town of people in the middle of things, of life, of mortgages and of the Essex commuter belt.
At the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, about 62% of Witham's 12,011 households owned their home, about 21% rented from a social landlord and about 16% rented privately. Owners are the clear majority, and the private landlord is the smallest of the three groups, which leaves anyone hunting for a private rental with a short list to choose from.
The median age in Witham is 39, and about 30% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is the age when people want a garden, a station and a school within reach, and Witham's median resident has settled somewhere that offers all three.
Gross household income in Witham averaged about £58,000 a year in the financial year to March 2023, before tax, as modelled by the Office for National Statistics across the town's neighbourhoods. That is the money a household earns before tax, and before the season ticket comes out of it.
About 30% of Witham households are one person living alone, and about 13% are a pensioner on their own, counted within that same group. Couples with children make up about 21% of households and lone parents about 12%. More Witham homes hold a single person than a couple with children, though the school run makes the place look much fuller of families than that.
About 25% of Witham's residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 20% have no formal qualifications, while full-time students make up about 2%. The mix sits between the two ends with no great lean either way, and students barely register in a town with no university and a train out to the places that have one.
Witham's population is solidly middling: working-age, mostly owner-occupied and earning a reasonable living, with nothing about it that will either sell the town to a buyer or put one off.