Population Statistics
HomeUKBorough of OldhamDelph

Borough of Oldham · England

Delph population

1,899people · latest estimate

By James Burfield, SEO consultant, Bath · Page updated · GeoNames · World Gazetteer 2005 · FSA register

Delph has a population of 1,899, making it the 9th largest place in Borough of Oldham. In 2005 the World Gazetteer recorded 2,098, a fall of 9.5% since.

2,098
in 2005
-9.5%
since 2005

The other populations of Delph

Depending on where you draw the boundary, Delph has between 1,899 and 2,280 residents. Both are correct.

What you meanPopulationSource
The place itself
The populated settlement, roughly the built-up core.
1,899 GeoNames
The built-up area
Continuous development, where buildings sit less than 200m apart. Drawn from where the buildings are, not where the council boundary is.
2,280 ONS Census 2021 (2021)
The place in 2005
The same settlement twenty years earlier.
2,098 World Gazetteer (2005)

Why these differ: which population figure is right? · compare with another place

The 2005 figure is from the World Gazetteer archive and may draw its boundary differently from the current source, so treat the change as indicative. Sources: method.

Delph in context

2 km
south to Uppermill, the nearest larger town
415,785
people live within 10 km
#3,032
largest of 6,358 UK places
Delph in the UK

Distances are straight-line from the settlement's recorded coordinates. The 10 km figure sums the recorded places within that radius, so it describes how built-up the surroundings are rather than people per square kilometre.

The centre of Delph sits in postcode district OL3.

Food and drink on the high street

Registered premisesCount
Restaurants and cafés (48.2 per 10,000 residents)11
Takeaways and sandwich shops (13.2 per 10,000 residents)3
Pubs, bars and nightclubs (21.9 per 10,000 residents)5

Counts are registered food premises in the Delph built-up area (2,280 residents at the 2021 census), from the FSA food hygiene register, extracted 17 August 2026. The boundary is drawn from where the buildings are, so these figures cover the town itself rather than the wider council area, and no total is shown because the register also lists premises nobody would call a venue: school kitchens, care homes, warehouses. Compare towns →

Shops and services

PremisesCount
Shops (all retail) (35.1 per 10,000 residents)8
Cafés (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Hairdressing salons (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Banks and building societies (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Gyms (8.8 per 10,000 residents)2
Surgeries (GP, dental and similar) (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Libraries (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Community centres (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1
Theatres (4.4 per 10,000 residents)1

Shops, cafés, salons, banks, post offices and arcades are rateable premises by use on the VOA 2023 rating list — the shops figure is all general retail, charity shops included. Gambling premises come from the Gambling Commission's licensing register, which lists 6,251 betting shops nationally against the rating list's 3,838: many betting shops are rated as ordinary shops, so the licensing register is the truer count and the one used here. Categories the rating list counts badly are deliberately absent rather than wrong: petrol stations disappear into supermarket ratings, vets and museums run far under their professional registers, and pools and nurseries mostly rate inside other premises. Same built-up-area boundary as the download table on this page.

Crime

No figures are shown here because the local constabulary does not publish incident data to the national open-data service, and a partial rate from neighbouring forces' edges would mislead. Recorded-crime statistics for the wider force area are on ONS crime pages.

House prices

Property typeMedian sale price
All types (24 sales)£260,000

Medians of actual registered sales in the Delph built-up area, July 2025 to June 2026, from HM Land Registry Price Paid data (standard open-market sales only; repossessions, part-value transfers and non-residential records excluded). A median is the middle sale, so it resists the mansion problem that skews averages. Recent sales take weeks to register, which is why the window ends before the current month. Types with fewer than 20 sales are not shown. Compare towns →

Schools

Open establishmentsSchoolsPlacesPupilsFilled
Primary schools121020597.6%

The 2021 census counted 112 children aged 5 to 9 in the town: one state primary school for every 112 of them.

Open schools registered in the Delph built-up area, from the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register, extracted 24 August 2026. Each school counts once: an independent special school appears under special schools, and the phase rows are state schools. Places are reported capacity and pupils each school's latest census return, summed only over schools reporting both, and shown only where at least 9 in 10 of a phase's schools do; state primaries across measured towns run at 89.2% of capacity, secondaries 91.3%. The children-per-school figure pairs a 2021 census count with today's register, so growth or decline since the census is not in it. No inspection grades are shown because Ofsted stopped issuing single-word overall judgements in 2024 and the register no longer carries them; current inspection reports are on Ofsted's own site. England only: the register lists Welsh schools without phase detail.

Broadband

Availability% of homes
Gigabit-capable (1,000 Mbit/s+)94.7%
Superfast (30 Mbit/s+)98.4%

Share of the 1,027 residential premises in this built-up area that the fixed network can serve at each speed, from Ofcom's Connected Nations coverage data (network state July 2025). Availability is what the line to a home can deliver if ordered, not what households actually subscribe to, and a full-fibre street where everyone bought the cheapest package shows 100% here. Percentile compares towns of 10,000+ residents. Compare towns →

Go deeper

Postcode district OL3
Wards, constituencies and the deprivation profile

Nearby in Borough of Oldham

#PlacePopulation
1Lees12,630
2Hollinwood12,310
3Uppermill11,191
4Diggle1,716
5Dobcross1,567
6Shaw1,001

All 13 places in Borough of Oldham →