1.1 Overview

Bradford district has 546,400+ residents, making it England’s fifth largest metropolitan authority by population. This reflects a 4.6% growth since 2011. The gender split is 49% male, 51% female. It ranks fifth in the UK for local government population, after Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and Manchester.⁴

Much of the data in this section comes from the 2021 Census, carried out by the Office for National Statistics. Key headlines include: 

• Life Expectancy: Life expectancy is 77.3 for men and 81.5 for women, considerably less than the current UK average of 87.3 years for males and 90.2 years for females.⁵
• Young Population: The population of Bradford is young, with a median age of 33 years, compared with a median age of 40 years for England.
• Ethnic Diversity: The district has an ethnically diverse population, with a large South Asian community, including people of Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi descent. Other ethnic groups in Bradford include White British, Black Caribbean, and Black African.
• Households: There are 199,296 households in the Bradford district. Most households own their own home (29.3% outright and 35.7% with a mortgage). The percentage of privately rented households is 18.1%, and 29.6% of households are single-person households.
• Education: Nearly a quarter of Bradford residents have no qualifications (24%), more than the average for Yorkshire and The Humber (20.6%) or England (18.2%),although this has reduced from 27.7% since 2011.
• Religion: The largest religious group in Bradford is Christian (33.4%), followed by Muslim(30.5%). Additionally, 28.2% of the district’s population stated that they have no religion.
• Health and Welfare: Bradford residents fare worse than the UK average for many health and welfare indicators, with high levels of obesity and diabetes, and low levels of physical activity. Many of these health issues are tied to wider economic and social issues such as access to health services and health literacy.

Figure 1:  Key demographic data for the City of Bradford District