Population Statistics
Abercarn
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Caerphilly County Borough · Wales

Abercarn population

10,118people · latest estimate

Photo: RAY JONES, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By James Burfield, SEO consultant, Bath · Page updated · GeoNames · FSA register

Abercarn has a population of 10,118, making it the 7th largest place in Caerphilly County Borough.

The other populations of Abercarn

Depending on where you draw the boundary, Abercarn has between 5,125 and 10,118 residents. Both are correct.

What you meanPopulationSource
The place itself
The populated settlement, roughly the built-up core.
10,118 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.
5,125 ONS Census 2021 (2021)

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

Abercarn in context

5 km
south-east to Risca, the nearest larger town
239,699
people live within 10 km
#1,231
largest of 6,358 UK places
Abercarn 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 Abercarn sits in postcode district NP11.

Food and drink on the high street

Registered premisesCount
Restaurants and cafés (11.7 per 10,000 residents)6
Takeaways and sandwich shops (9.8 per 10,000 residents)5
Pubs, bars and nightclubs (15.6 per 10,000 residents)8

Counts are registered food premises in the Abercarn built-up area (5,125 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) (54.6 per 10,000 residents)28
Hairdressing salons (9.8 per 10,000 residents)5
Post offices (3.9 per 10,000 residents)2
Gyms (3.9 per 10,000 residents)2
Surgeries (GP, dental and similar) (2.0 per 10,000 residents)1
Libraries (2.0 per 10,000 residents)1
Car parks (3.9 per 10,000 residents)2

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, per 1,000 residents

Category (police-recorded, 12 months)Rate
Violence and sexual offences35.5
Anti-social behaviour22.2
Shoplifting0.4
Criminal damage and arson9.8
Vehicle crime5.5
Burglary2.9
Other theft4.9
Robbery0.2
All recorded offences96.2

The all-offences line is a count of records, not a safety score: it weighs every category equally, which is exactly why we publish the categories. We deliberately do not combine them into a single index.

Figures are police-recorded crime (August 2025 to July 2026) located to this built-up area, per 1,000 residents at the 2021 census. Three cautions, each of which changes how a rate should be read: recorded crime is not crime experienced, because reporting rates differ by category and by place; the denominator counts residents, so town centres and visitor towns run high per resident precisely because many people there are not residents; and a high figure can reflect more reporting as easily as more crime. Percentiles compare towns of 10,000+ residents. Greater Manchester and Gloucestershire constabularies do not publish, so their towns show a note instead of a partial figure. Compare towns →

House prices

Property typeMedian sale price
Semi-detached (22 sales)£175,000
Terraced (21 sales)£160,000
All types (48 sales)£165,000

Medians of actual registered sales in the Abercarn 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 →

Council tax

The area Band D council tax for Caerphilly, the billing authority covering Abercarn, is £2,083 for 2026–27.

From the Welsh Government's council tax levels (Table 1): the overall average including police and community council elements, so it is the council's figure rather than the town's, and your own band depends on your property's 2003 valuation — Wales revalued in 2003 where England still uses 1991.

Schools

Maintained schools in the built-up areaCount
Primary schools3

From the Welsh Government's address list of schools (April 2026), located to this built-up area by postcode. Maintained schools only. No capacity or fill figures are shown: Wales publishes no per-school capacity file beside the address list, and the English pages' fill rates come from exactly such a file, so a Welsh version would be a guess.

Broadband

Availability% of homes
Gigabit-capable (1,000 Mbit/s+)85.9%
Superfast (30 Mbit/s+)99.2%
Unable to get 10 Mbit/s download4 homes (0.2%)

Share of the 2,386 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 →

Common questions

What is the population of Abercarn?
The populated place itself holds 10,118 residents. The built-up area, the boundary drawn from where the buildings actually stand, holds 5,125 at the 2021 census. Each figure describes a different boundary and all are correct; the meanings table on this page says which is which, because a population without its boundary is not an answer.

Go deeper

Postcode district NP11
Wards, constituencies and the deprivation profile

Towns like Abercarn

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

TownCountyMedian priceOffences /1,000Median ageOwner-occupied
Abercarn Caerphilly County Borough £165,000 96.2 40.8 67.2%
Aberdare Rhondda Cynon Taf £155,000 97.0 42.3 65.9%
Cudworth Barnsley £165,000 100.0 41.1 64.3%
Bolton upon Dearne Barnsley £140,000 84.5 39.8 65.5%
Consett County Durham £145,000 91.0 42.7 65.6%
Ystalyfera Neath Port Talbot £160,000 86.8 43.3 66.2%

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 Caerphilly County Borough

#PlacePopulation
1Blackwood15,476
2Bargoed13,412
3Nelson12,857
4Rhymney8,537
5Bedwas8,242
6Newbridge6,509

All 18 places in Caerphilly County Borough →