Bracknell Forest - Demographics

Demographics

Bracknell Forest is generally affluent (ranked 291 out of 326 on the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010, Rank of Average Score) with significantly lower than average unemployment levels. Property prices and levels of car ownership are significantly higher than the national average. According to the Office of National Statistics figures the borough’s population is 113,696. 77% of the borough’s population, aged between 16 and 74 years are economically active with the service sector employing the largest proportion, 46.4% of this group. Only 11% of the population is of pensionable age, compared to a national average of 18%, with 7% being over 75 years old.

There are many distinctive local geographical communities within Bracknell Forest, from Sandhurst and Crowthorne in the south, the semi-rural communities of Binfield, Winkfield and Warfield in the north and the former new town of Bracknell in the centre, which contains most of the Borough’s commercial and industrial areas.

According to the Office of National Statistics figures, the majority of the Borough’s residents (89.6%) consider themselves to be ‘White’. The second largest group is defined as ‘Asian’ at 4.34%, third as ‘Black’ at 2.35%, fourth as Mixed at 1.82% Culturally the population is predominantly Christian (77.8%), but growing and increasingly becoming a more diverse ethnic mix. The second largest group have no religion (19.4%), third largest being Hindu (1.1%), fourth largest is Muslim (0.7%) followed by Buddhists (0.3%) and other religions (0.3%), followed by Jewish (0.2%) and Sikh (0.2%) populations.

The population is quite healthy comparing well regionally and nationally with life expectancy at 80.15 years.