FOI ref: FOI-2023-1304
You asked
Please could you inform me of:
The overall population of Isle of Wight including details of it's 4 largest towns.
An Ethnic breakdown (broad ethnic groupings i.e. White, Black, Asian, Arabic, other) for Isle of Wight overall and also for it's 4 largest towns.
We said
Thank you for your freedom of information request.
In Census terms, villages, towns and cities do not have statutory boundaries so ONS constructs tables for built-up areas (previously known as 'urban areas') to cover the built-up places people recognise as 'villages, ‘towns' and 'cities'. The name has changed to 'Built-up areas' to help avoid previous inconsistency in terminology with the rural-urban definition and provide a name that more accurately describes the geography.
The population of the Isle of Wight and its four most populated built-up areas (BUAs), at the time of the 2021 Census is as follows:
Isle of Wight total- 140,459
Newport - 25,405
Ryde - 24,105
Cowes - 14,365
Sandown - 11,655
On 2 August ONS published some analysis on Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021, in which several datasets have been released for built-up areas. However, ethnic group is not included as one of the datasets.
The associated download 'Isle of Wight Unitary Authority Census ethnic group data' contains the 2021 Census ethnic group data (TS021) for the Isle of Wight Unitary Authority.