News Item 7

Statistics

Surfing the Internet is rather like browsing a dictionary, you go to look for one thing and get distracted and end up finding out all sorts of things that you didn’t know before. I can’t even remember now, what it was that I originally looked for but I ended up downloading a report from West Devon Borough Council and a load of statistics from the National Statistics site from the 2001 Census. Before I came off line, I took a trip to Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and obtained, with surprisingly no trouble whatsoever, a licence to reproduce these facts under their ‘Click and Use’ application system.

The first set of statistics interested me because it went against my perceptions of things. Since living here, I have deliberately taken only the Western Morning News and not a National newspaper. I am well aware of that paper’s many faults but equally know that these are shared by all the press and, at least, the WMN covers places and things of interest to me. However, with its virtually daily front page tirades on the plight of West Country farming and fisheries, it has tended to give me, it would now appear, a skewed impression of the area. The chart below shows how every hundred working people are employed in the South West with a comparison to national averages.

By and large, the South West does not differ much from the national averages - 1% higher in Agriculture, Hunting & Forestry, and the same in Hotels & Restaurants, and in Public Admin, Defence & Social Security and nearly 1% lower in Manufacturing and nearly 2% lower in Real Estate & Renting - rather what one might expect from a largely rural area.

On a different note, the report from West Devon Borough Council was concerned with sports playing pitches. Here are some facts from it.

“West Devon is the largest local authority area in Devon and one of the largest in the country.”

“Tavistock is the largest town.. population 11,000 ... catchment area 30,000. Next Okehampton... population 5,500... catchment 25,000. Next Buckland monachorum... population 3,600. Then Bere Ferrers, Horrabridge, North Tawton, Chagford, Princetown & Hatherleigh ... populations between 3,000 - 1,000.”

“There are 22 Soccer Clubs with 55 teams. 14 Cricket Clubs with 47 teams. 4 Rugby Clubs with 5 adult & 10 junior teams. 2 Hockey Clubs with 6 teams.”

“There are 114 playing pitches in West Devon with a ratio of 1 pitch to 506 adults which is better than the national average of 1 pitch per 989 adults.”

However, the report concludes that these pitches have a high useage and need improviment, particularly with regard to changing and club facilities.

Back to the Census. South Tawton has 709 households, 693 living in an unshared house or bungalow. Of these, 306 are detatched, 215 are semi-detatched and 172 are terraced. This is about 50 households less than Hatherleigh & Chagford and 20 less than North Tawton but, in % terms, the ratio of detatched is almost identical and that for semi and terraced varies up to a maximum of 7% (with North Tawton having more terraced than semi ). South Tawton’s ratio of 44.16% households living in a detached house, compares very well with the England & Wales average of 22.8%!

West Devon has 22.7% single (never married) against the England & Wales average of 30.1% and 57.3% married or re-married against the national 50.9%. The divorced and separated figure are virtually the same as average.

West Devon has 76.4% Christian (Eng & Wales Av. 71.8%) and 15.4% no religion (Av. 14.8%).

We have a higher than average employment rate - 61.6% to average 60.6, lower unemployment 2.4% to average 3.4% and a much higher retired population 17.2% to average 13.6%.

And finally - education

Those in West Devon with no qualifications is 25.8% against the average 29.1% and those with a degree or higher in West Devon is 21.8% against the England & Wales average of 19.8% so either the local population is cleverer than the rest of the country or all those retired people were clever enough to choose West Devon to retire to.