The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have published further results from the 2021 Census, helping us to better our understanding of the Somerset population. The latest results reveal insights into ethnic groups, languages spoken, and religions.
It should be remembered that the 2021 Census is a snapshot of the population on 21st March 2021, a time during which coronavirus restrictions were in place. These restrictions will likely have impacted on living arrangements for certain groups – such as university students – and will therefore have an impact on the census results.
Religion
There has been a large increase since 2011 in the number of Somerset residents with no religion, and a corresponding decrease in the number of Christians. This reflects a similar national trend.
Around half of the Somerset population now identify as Christian, with 4 in 10 not identifying with any religion. There have been increases in the number of Somerset residents identifying with other non-Christian major religions since 2011, although these groups remain a small proportion of the Somerset population.
The Somerset population as a whole is less likely to identify with a religion than the population of England and Wales (52% in Somerset as no religion or not stated, vs 56.8% nationally).
English speakers
Over 99% of the Somerset population speak English either as their main language, or to a good level as a secondary language. At the time of the 2021 census there were 515 Somerset residents aged over 3 who could not speak English, with a further 3244 who reported not being able to speak English well.
Main language
96% of Somerset residents speak English as their main language. This is a much higher proportion than the equivalent figure of 91% for England and Wales.
Polish remains the second most common first language spoken by Somerset residents, with nearly 7,000 Polish speakers. This is also true nationally, with Romanian also being the second common both in Somerset and nationally. The most common non-European main languages for Somerset residents are Malayalam (733 residents) and Tagalog/Filipino (602 residents). Tagalog/Filipino is the only one of the top 10 non-English main languages to have seen a small decrease since 2011.
The largest increase since 2011 has been amongst those who speak Romanian as their first language (increasing from 291 to 3,583); corresponding with a similar increase in numbers of Somerset residents born in Romania seen in the country of birth dataset.
Ethnic groups
Over 96% of Somerset residents class themselves as being from a White ethnic group. This is lower than in 2011 when the equivalent figure was 98%. Within the broader white ethnic group, those from a white British background now account for a smaller proportion of Somerset residents, whilst those from other white backgrounds have proportionally increased. Other white groups now account for over 1 in 20 Somerset residents.
The greatest relative change since 2011 comes amongst those from black ethnic groups, with the number of residents from those groups having more than doubled from 1,013 in 2011 to 2,436 in 2021.
There are 14,544 households in Somerset comprised of residents from different ethnic groups. This represents 8.4% of all Somerset households with more than one resident and is an increase of over 5,000 households since 2011, when the proportion was 5.7%.
The proportion of Christians in Somerset declined from 76.7% in 2001 to 64.0% in 2011. The proportion of people who said they had no religious affiliation increased from 14.8% to 26.6% over the same period. - 2011 Census