Population Statistics
Burton upon Trent
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Staffordshire · England

Burton upon Trent population

122,199people · latest estimate

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

Burton upon Trent has a population of 122,199, making it the 2nd largest place in Staffordshire.

#2
of 67 in Staffordshire

The other populations of Burton upon Trent

Depending on where you draw the boundary, Burton upon Trent has between 76,255 and 122,199 residents. Both are correct.

What you meanPopulationSource
The place itself
The populated settlement, roughly the built-up core.
122,199 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.
76,255 ONS Census 2021 (2021)

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

Burton upon Trent has no city status, making it the 32nd largest town in the UK.

Burton upon Trent in context

17 km
north-east to Derby, the nearest larger town
170,796
people live within 10 km
#85
largest of 6,358 UK places
Burton upon Trent 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 Burton upon Trent sits in postcode district DE14.

What the data shows about Burton upon Trent

Burton upon Trent is one of the 61 English and Welsh towns below the national town median on both house prices (£205,000 against £259,950) and recorded crime (99.1 against 100 per 1,000), the cut the best places to live page maps.

MeasureValueAmong comparable towns
Median house price£205,000higher than 25% of towns
Recorded offences per 1,00099.1higher than 61% of towns
Gigabit availability88.0%higher than 19% of towns
Takeaways per 10,0008.1higher than 39% of towns
Median age (estimated)37.5higher than 12% of towns
Managerial or professional share32.9%higher than 14% of towns
Owner-occupied households60.6%higher than 26% of towns

Against Derby, the nearest larger town 17 km north-east: house prices are 7% lower (£205,000 against £220,000); recorded crime is lower (99.1 against 133.9 per 1,000); gigabit availability is worse (88% against 98%).

Each percentile compares Burton upon Trent 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

MeasureValue
Median age (estimated) (older than 12% of towns)37.5
Under 1519.6%
65 and over15.2%
85 and over1.9%

From the 2021 census age table for this built-up area (76,200 residents). The shares are exact sums of the census's five-year bands. The median is exact to its band: the middle resident of Burton upon Trent falls in the 35 to 39 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

Registered premisesCount
Restaurants and cafés (18.5 per 10,000 residents)141
Takeaways and sandwich shops (8.1 per 10,000 residents)62
Pubs, bars and nightclubs (7.3 per 10,000 residents)56
Hotels, B&Bs and guest houses (0.8 per 10,000 residents)6
Supermarkets and hypermarkets (2.1 per 10,000 residents)16

Counts are registered food premises in the Burton upon Trent built-up area (76,255 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) (82.4 per 10,000 residents)628
Cafés (2.9 per 10,000 residents)22
Hairdressing salons (5.4 per 10,000 residents)41
Banks and building societies (1.3 per 10,000 residents)10
Post offices (0.1 per 10,000 residents)1
Gyms (0.9 per 10,000 residents)7
Leisure and sports centres (0.7 per 10,000 residents)5
Surgeries (GP, dental and similar) (4.5 per 10,000 residents)34
Libraries (0.1 per 10,000 residents)1
Community centres (1.6 per 10,000 residents)12
Theatres (0.1 per 10,000 residents)1
Car parks (1.8 per 10,000 residents)14
Amusement arcades (0.3 per 10,000 residents)2
Licensed betting shops (0.9 per 10,000 residents)7
Bingo halls (0.1 per 10,000 residents)1
Adult gaming centres (0.1 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, per 1,000 residents

Category (police-recorded, 12 months)RateOn the year
Violence and sexual offences (higher than 75% of towns)42.7+8%
Anti-social behaviour (higher than 50% of towns)13.2+20%
Shoplifting (higher than 44% of towns)6.8+9%
Criminal damage and arson (higher than 43% of towns)6.4+16%
Vehicle crime (higher than 46% of towns)3.0-16%
Burglary (higher than 56% of towns)2.9-4%
Other theft5.6-1%
Robbery (higher than 75% of towns)1.2+44%
All recorded offences (higher than 61% of towns)99.1+9%

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.

The year column compares August 2025 to July 2026 with the twelve months before it, August 2024 to July 2025, two windows that do not overlap. A dash means that category had fewer than 50 offences in one of the years, where a percentage would be arithmetic rather than information. Read these as changes in what was recorded: a force changing how it logs a category, or a local campaign encouraging people to report, moves this column without anything changing on the street. The change is withheld entirely for any town whose force did not publish all twelve months in both years.

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
Detached (254 sales)£320,000
Semi-detached (247 sales)£205,000
Terraced (260 sales)£156,000
Flat or maisonette (60 sales)£98,000
All types (821 sales)£205,000
Change on the year before
each type compared with itself, July 2024 to June 2025
+1.4%

Medians of actual registered sales in the Burton upon Trent 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 East Staffordshire, the billing authority covering Burton upon Trent, is £2,351 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

Tenure% of households
Owned, outright or with a mortgage (higher than 26% of towns)60.6%
  of which owned outright30.4%
Private rented23.9%
Social rented15.4%
Household has no car or van (higher than 69% of towns)22.7%
Household has two or more35.5%

Census 2021 records for the 31,165 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

Open establishmentsSchoolsPlacesPupilsFilled
Primary schools237,3176,57489.8% (fuller than 50% of towns)
Secondary schools67,8606,70585.3%
Sixth forms and 16+ colleges1
Special schools2

The 2021 census counted 5,096 children aged 5 to 9 in the town: one state primary school for every 222 of them.

Open schools registered in the Burton upon Trent 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

Burton upon Trent has 9 GP practices with 89,932 registered patients between them: 9,992 per practice (more stretched than 41% 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: 1 Outstanding, 7 Good.

Care homes: 2 Outstanding, 24 Good, 4 Requires improvement.

Registered dental practices: 16 (2.1 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

Availability% of homes
Gigabit-capable (1,000 Mbit/s+) (higher than 19% of towns)88.0%
Superfast (30 Mbit/s+)99.6%
Unable to get 10 Mbit/s download69 homes (0.2%)

Share of the 34,119 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

Pollutant (modelled annual mean, 2024)µg/m³Reference points
Fine particles (PM2.5) (higher than 49% of towns)6.8WHO guideline 5 · UK legal limit 20
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)8.9WHO guideline 10 · UK legal limit 40

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

DesignationCount
Grade I (exceptional interest)2
Grade II* (particularly important)10
Grade II160
All listed buildings172
On the Heritage at Risk register2
Conservation areas centred hereat least 8

Its Grade I entries include Church of St Chad, Church of St Modwen.

At risk, per Historic England: Brizlincote Hall Farmhouse, Brizlincote Lane; Sinai Park, Burton on Trent.

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

Measure (census day, 21 March 2021)Share
Economically active (of residents 16+)63.6%
Retired (of residents 16+)18.9%
Unemployed on census day (of the economically active)5.1%
Managerial or professional occupations (of those in employment; higher than 14% of towns)32.9%

Census 2021 records for the 60,424 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

Railway station inside the built-up area: Burton-on-Trent (913,000 entries and exits, April 2024 to March 2025, ORR estimate).

463 marked bus stops sit inside the built-up area (60.7 per 10,000 residents).

How working residents travelled (census day)Share
Worked mainly from home (higher than 14% of towns)18.0%
Car or van62.3%
Train, metro, tram or bus2.1%
Walked or cycled13.7%

Travel shares are the 2021 census (36,473 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

Is Burton upon Trent safe?
Police recorded 99.1 offences per 1,000 residents in the Burton upon Trent built-up area over the year to July 2026, higher than 61% of English and Welsh towns of 10,000+ people; violence and sexual offences ran at 42.7 per 1,000. Recorded crime counts reports rather than danger, and visitor towns run high per resident, so read the per-category table on this page before drawing a conclusion.
Is Burton upon Trent a good place to live?
Good depends on weights no dataset holds, so this page shows the measures separately: the median sale price is £205,000, recorded crime runs at 99.1 offences per 1,000 residents, and 88% of homes can order gigabit broadband. Burton upon Trent is one of the 61 towns below the national median on both house prices and recorded crime. Weigh those against what you value; the figures above carry their sources and caveats.
Does Burton upon Trent have a railway station?
Yes: Burton-on-Trent station lies inside the Burton upon Trent built-up area, per the Department for Transport's NaPTAN register as at 25 August 2026.
What is the population of Burton upon Trent?
The populated place itself holds 122,199 residents. The built-up area, the boundary drawn from where the buildings actually stand, holds 76,255 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.
How many listed buildings does Burton upon Trent have?
Burton upon Trent's built-up area holds 172 entries on the National Heritage List for England: 2 at Grade I, 10 at Grade II* and 160 at Grade II, with 2 on the Heritage at Risk register. Buildings just outside the built-up boundary are not counted, so a parish total can run higher.

Go deeper

Best places to live
Burton upon Trent is one of the 61 towns below the national median on both prices and crime
Postcode district DE14
Wards, constituencies and the deprivation profile

Towns like Burton upon Trent

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

TownCountyMedian priceOffences /1,000Median ageOwner-occupied
Burton upon Trent Staffordshire £205,000 99.1 37.5 60.6%
Crewe Cheshire East £192,500 109.3 38.7 61.7%
Middleton Borough of Rochdale £227,000 38.9 60.2%
Pyle Bridgend county borough £194,750 83.2 40.2 61.4%
Spalding Lincolnshire £205,000 103.5 40.7 62.5%
Telford Telford and Wrekin £210,000 100.5 39.0 59.0%

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 Staffordshire

#PlacePopulation
1Newcastle under Lyme127,727
2Cannock86,121
3Tamworth81,964
4Stafford70,145
5Lichfield34,738

All 67 places in Staffordshire →