Population

The Research Team collates and analyses information about Herefordshire's population provided by the Office for National Statistics, as well as producing our own local population forecasts. 

The Population of Herefordshire (which can be download from the resources box at the bottom of the page) is a digest of key facts and figures about the population, including analyses of how it has changed in recent years; how it is expected to change in the future; how it differs around the county and its ethnic composition.

Current Population of Herefordshire County

The most recent estimate of the population of Herefordshire is 178,400. This is the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2007 mid-year estimate, published in August 2008.

This represents an increase of 600 people (0.3%) since 2006. This increase was made up of 1,700 births; 2,000 deaths; net migration of 700 people from other parts of the UK and 100 from overseas, plus an estimated increase of 100 in the number of armed forces resident in the county.

Since 2001, the county's population has grown by 2.0%, slightly less than the increase of 3.3% in the population of England and Wales as a whole.

A breakdown of the current population by age and gender, as well as a comparison with the national age structure and a look at changes since 2001, can be downloaded from the resource box at the bottom of the page.

Sub-County Level Populations

Estimates for small areas

A comprehensive set of population figures for areas smaller than county level (i.e. wards, parishes, output areas and super output areas) are only produced every 10 years, as part of the national Census of Population. However, the ONS has developed 'experimental' estimates for lower super output areas (LSOAs) and wards. There are 116 LSOAs in Herefordshire, and these 'nest' into the current ward boundaries.  These have been aggregated to produce estimates of the population of market towns.

The LSOA, ward and market town estimates for mid-2007, broken down by age and gender, are available to download from the box below. Also available from this box are the total estimated population for each of these areas for all years, mid-2001 to mid-2007.

Please note that there are no current estimates of the population of Herefordshire parishes; the most recent figures being from the 2001 Census.

The 2001 Census populations of parishes, and wards, can be found in the 'Census' section.

Distribution around the county

Herefordshire has the 4th lowest overall population density in England (0.8 persons per hectare), and the population is scattered across the 842 square miles of the county. Just under a third of residents live in Hereford city; just over a fifth in the five market towns (Leominster, Ross, Ledbury, Bromyard & Kington). This means that nearly half of the population lives in villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings in rural areas.

A scattered population presents particular challenges for service delivery; 'sparsity' measures give an indication of how widely dispersed an area's population is. Despite other counties having a lower overall population density, no area has a greater proportion of its population living in 'very sparse' areas than Herefordshire (25%). The first sparsity paper available to download from the resource box presents the analysis behind this statement, and the second looks at other aspects related to sparsity: distance from key services and road length.