Ethnic minorities

According to the 2001 census, about 9 per cent of the people in Britain are non-white. While there were predictions of a large growth in ethnic minorities in some cities, the picture is more complicated than that. Two areas of London have become the first in the UK to have a non-white majority — Newham and Brent.

What the figures of the census don't tell us at the moment is how mobile the UK's minority communities have become. Many academics predict that British Indians will be most mobile because of a historically high level of their qualifications.

London has the highest proportion of minority ethnic communities. Just a lit­tle over 50 per cent of the city's people describe themselves as white British. A fur­ther 14 per cent are either white Irish or white other, which includes Europeans,

Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, etc. There are now more ethnically African residents (8 per cent) in London than black Caribbean (7 per cent). The largest Asian community is Bangladeshis (5 per cent), principally in east London.

On the other hand, Luton, Birmingham, Leicester and Blackburn have seen an increase in their ethnic minority shares of greater than five percent since 1991 with the conurbations of Manchester, Bradford and Oldham seeing an increase of around the 3-5 per cent mark. The city long predicted to have the first non-white majority, Leicester, actually has minority ethnic communities comprising only 36 per cent of its total population.

The greatest change can be seen in Greater London, particularly in Hounslow, Lewisham, Croydon, Tower Hamlets, Harrow and Redbridge. Newham has seen the greatest increase in its ethnic minority share with an increase Of 18 per cent over the 1991-2001 decade.

Households

The results of the 2001 census show that household numbers are falling. More than a quarter of homes in the UK are owned outright by their occupiers, while almost another four in 10 are owned with the help of a mortgage or loan.

Almost a quarter (22.5 per cent) qualify as social housing, while 8 per cent are privately rented. By far the highest proportion of social housing exists in Scotland, where more than a quarter of all homes are owned by either a council or housing association.

The most popular type of home in the UK is semi-detached (more than 27 per cent of all homes), closely followed by detached, then terraced. Just over a fifth of all homes are flats or bedsits² — but this figure varies dramatically in different parts of Britain.

In Scotland, a third of all homes are in purpose built blocks of flats or tene­ments, compared with just over 7 per cent of all homes in Northern Ireland.

As it would be expected, some of the UK's large cities have the highest propor­tion of flats and bedsits — 70 per cent in Glasgow, 69 per cent in inner London and 60 per cent in Edinburgh. Northern Ireland has the largest number of detached homes and bungalows — more than a third fall into this category. But at the same time 1.5 million households in the UK are overcrowded.