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Borough of Oldham · England

Failsworth population

20,555people · latest estimate

Photo: Paul likes pics, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Failsworth has a population of 20,555, making it the 5th largest place in Borough of Oldham. In 2005 the World Gazetteer recorded 20,209, a rise of 1.7% since.

The other populations of Failsworth

The same name covers more than one area, and each has its own figure.

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

Failsworth in context

3 km

south-east to Droylsden, the nearest larger town

1,447,997

people live within 10 km

#629

largest of 6,358 UK places

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 Failsworth sits in postcode district M35.

What the data shows about Failsworth

The high street carries more takeaways per head than 9 in 10 comparable towns: 16.5 per 10,000 residents.

Each percentile compares Failsworth with every English and Welsh town of 10,000+ residents that carries that measure, on the same built-up-area boundary. The sections below give every figure its source, its date and its caveats, and a high or low position is a starting point for questions rather than a verdict.

Age profile

From the 2021 census age table for this built-up area (19,978 residents). The shares are exact sums of the census's five-year bands. The median is exact to its band: the middle resident of Failsworth falls in the 40 to 44 band, and the single figure is interpolated within it, which is why it is labelled estimated; single year of age is not published at this geography. A typical town's estimated median is 42.5. Compare towns →

Food and drink on the high street

Counts are registered food premises in the Failsworth built-up area (19,960 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

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

Medians of actual registered sales in the Failsworth 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. The year-on-year change compares this window with the twelve months before it, July 2024 to June 2025, and compares each property type with itself before combining them on this year's mix. Doing it the obvious way instead, median against median, would have this town's prices swing on which kind of house happened to sell: one town in this data sold 29 detached houses one year and 9 the next, and its raw median halved without a single house changing price. The change is published only where the types compared cover most of the year's sales and the town saw 50+ of them. Compare towns →

Council tax

The area Band D council tax for Oldham, the billing authority covering Failsworth, is £2,602 for 2026–27.

From MHCLG's council tax statistics (Table 9): the area average including police, fire and parish precepts, so it is the council's figure rather than the town's, and your own band depends on your property's 1991 valuation.

Who owns the homes

Census 2021 records for the 8,896 households in this built-up area. Every share is of households, not residents. Shared ownership is counted with mortgaged homes; households living rent free sit in none of the tenure rows, so the rows can sum a little under 100%. A typical town has 66.2% owner-occupied homes and 19.4% of households without a car; car rows record whether a household has one available, which says nothing about how often it is driven.

Schools

The 2021 census counted 1,134 children aged 5 to 9 in the town: one state primary school for every 189 of them.

Open schools registered in the Failsworth 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.

GP provision

Failsworth has 2 GP practices with 23,295 registered patients between them: 11,648 per practice (more stretched than 57% of measured towns; a typical town runs at 10,859).

From NHS England's registered-patients publication, August 2026: both numbers from one file at one date, which is what makes the ratio honest. Registered patients are not residents (lists lag moves in both directions), and practices just outside the built-up boundary serve towns too. England only; the separate surgeries line in the services table counts rateable premises of every kind, dental included, and the two must not be compared.

Care quality, as the regulator rates it

GP practices in the built-up area with a CQC overall rating: 2 Good.

Care homes: 2 Good.

Registered dental practices: 6 (3.0 per 10,000 residents). A count, not a judgment: CQC inspects dentists but does not rate them, so no dental practice anywhere has a rating to show.

These are the Care Quality Commission's own latest overall judgments (September 2026 publication), counted on this built-up area, never combined into any score of ours. A rating's age varies with when CQC last inspected, and unrated locations (new registrations, or types CQC does not rate) are not shown. The dental figure counts every registered location on CQC's directory, NHS and private alike; it says nothing about whether one is taking NHS patients. England only. Compare towns →

Broadband

Share of the 9,033 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 →

Air quality

Modelled background concentrations from DEFRA's Pollution Climate Mapping, averaged over this built-up area's 1 km grid cells weighted by where its postcodes actually are, so the fringe fields do not dilute the air people breathe. Modelled means modelled: kerbside spots run higher than any background figure. The reference points are stated for scale, and sitting between them is normal for a British town; a typical measured town's PM2.5 is 6.8.

Listed buildings

At risk, per Historic England: Church of St John, Oldham Road, Failsworth.

Entries on Historic England's National Heritage List for England whose recorded point falls inside this built-up area, snapped through the nearest postcode, the same join the stations use. Conservation areas count by their centre, and the phrasing is “at least” because Historic England's dataset only holds what each council has supplied. A count like this mostly reflects how much of the town stood before 1840, which is why no league table ranks it.

Work and occupations

Census 2021 records for the 16,338 residents aged 16 and over in this built-up area. Census day fell mid-pandemic and furloughed workers were counted as employed, so these shares describe that day rather than today; the current official unemployment rate exists only at local-authority level, on ONS labour-market pages. Each row names its own denominator because they differ, and mixing them is how work statistics mislead. No earnings figure is shown: the official earnings survey stops at district level, and no honest town-level number exists.

Getting to work and getting around

No railway station lies inside the built-up area, though light-rail or metro stops serve the area. The nearest National Rail station may sit just outside the boundary.

92 marked bus stops sit inside the built-up area (46.1 per 10,000 residents).

Travel shares are the 2021 census (9,342 working residents 16+): collected on 21 March 2021 under pandemic restrictions, when home-working was at its peak and commuting suppressed, so they describe that day and overstate today's home-working everywhere. They remain the only commuting record that exists at town level. Stations and bus stops are the Department for Transport's NaPTAN register as at 25 August 2026, located to this built-up area by coordinates; tram and metro are shown as presence only, because the register records their stops differently per system and an honest count does not exist. Passenger figures are the Office of Rail and Road's estimates of station usage, modelled from ticket sales and labelled estimates for that reason; a station shown without one did not match the ORR table by name, and no figure beats a guessed one.

Common questions

Go deeper

Towns like Failsworth

The closest statistical matches among English and Welsh towns of 10,000+ residents, with geography playing no part. Failsworth's own figures sit in the first row for comparison.

Matched on up to six measures — house prices, recorded crime, median age, owner-occupation, gigabit availability and professional occupations — each rank-normalised across the 773 towns that carry at least four of them. The likeness is mechanical, and the columns are here so you can judge it yourself.

Nearby in Borough of Oldham

All 13 places in Borough of Oldham →