Immigration boosts Redditch's population

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PEOPLE born outside the British Isles accounted for more than half of the increase in Redditch's population over the last ten years.

The borough has the fastest growing population in Worcestershire and latest figures released from last year's Census show it is largely being driven by immigration.

Almost 6,200 Redditch residents were born outside of the UK and Ireland according to the 2011 survey compared to 2,990 ten years ago.

Foreign nationals made up 59 per cent of the extra 5,393 people added to the borough's population since 2001, with the total now at 84,214. Pakistan is the top non-UK place of birth followed by Poland, India and the Caribbean.

The vast majority of Redditch's population - over 92 per cent - are British or Irish.

The data also puts a spotlight on the changing face of the borough and the way people live their lives.

There was close to a ten per cent drop in the number of people calling themselves Christians with the figure falling to 53,434. But there was a significant rise in the number of non-believers with over 10,000 more people saying they had no faith compared to 2001, while 260 people stated they were Jedi Knights.

The number of people getting married has increased to 33,069 in the last ten years, just under half of those aged 16 and over.

It is a bigger increase than those classed as single, while there are now 120 residents in civil partnerships - something which did not exist when the survey was carried out in 2001.

There are over 2,700 single parent households, over 9,000 people who live on their own while over 4,000 residents say their health is either bad or very bad.

In a sign of how soaring motoring costs have impacted on household budgets since 2001, over 7,000 households now have no access to a car, while those working part-time has increased by almost a quarter to just under 9,000 with 3,732 of those working less than 15 hours a week.

The impact of the boom in the UK's housing market has also been revealed with the number of homeowners with a mortgage in Redditch falling by 20 per cent and those renting rocketing by 170 per cent in ten years.

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