In 1886 the south coast resort of Torquay announced that it was the “the wealthiest town in England”. It couldn’t make that claim today.
We can see what has changed when we look at the Bay’s demographics. These include the increasing populations of Brixham, Paignton and Torquay, our ages, where our incomes come from, how much money we have and what we spend it on. Then we can consider what has changed and what is likely to happen over the coming years and decades.
Income is one of the first things we notice. Torbay’s annual wage is around £27,000, the third lowest in the UK. In contrast, Devon’s best-paid workers are in Exeter, just 24 miles away, where the wage is over £33,000. For the UK the median wage is above £37,000.
We may see ourselves as a resort town but accommodation and food services account for only 9% of local employment. This shows the shift in the Bay’s employment base away from the holidaymaking industry that fashioned Torquay and Paignton from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Our largest employment sectors are now in health and social work (20%), followed by wholesale and retail trade (16%), construction (10%), and education (9%). But we don’t really know how Artificial Intelligence and automation will affect our future employment options and how quickly.
One of the more significant changes is in the makeup of our population. If we look at old photographs of local street scenes we may notice high numbers of children. Images taken today tell a different story.
Women who married in the mid-nineteenth century bore an average of more than six children. In Torbay today women have an average of 1.2 children, the lowest rate on record. For a place to just maintain its population, the fertility rate needs to be around 2.1 children per woman.
This decline is particularly notable in the 20 to 29 age group. The average age of new mums and dads has increased to 34 for fathers and 31 for mothers.
“Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast”, Torquay visitor Charles Dickens
And it isn’t just in the UK. In most countries around the world, fertility rates are falling. 21 of 27 EU countries now have more deaths than births. In Italy, depopulating villages are selling homes for €1 to attract new residents. In Japan adult incontinence pads have been outstripping nappy sales for more than a decade. In contrast, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa populations are growing rapidly.
The reasons local people are having fewer children are complex and include financial pressures, rising housing and childcare expenses, not feeling ready or not having found the right partner. Others simply don’t feel an obligation to have children and choose not to do so. It could also be that there has been a reversal of intergenerational flows of wealth. Children have been transformed from an economically useful household asset to a burden.
One implication of birth rates continuing to fall is that Torbay’s early‑years and primary school numbers are declining year on year. Local schools are then likely to be forced to reorganise, merge, or reduce their intake.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the Bay will have fewer residents. The projections are that our population will rise from its current 140,000 to over 153,000 over the next 20 years.
What we are seeing is the gradual ‘greying’ of the Bay. During the nineteenth century only around half of people born made it past their fiftieth birthday; even during the 1950s life expectancy was only 66 for men and 70 for women. A boy and girl born in Torbay in the early 2020s now have a life expectancy of 78 and 83 years respectively.
In addition to local folk living longer, the coastal allure to the retired incomer has always given Torbay an older age profile, an average age of 49 years compared to 40 years across the UK. 27% of residents are now aged 65 and over. Within a decade it is predicted that one in three of us will have reached that age; this is already the case in Wellswood, Churston, Galmpton, Furzeham, and Summercombe.
Derelict sites and underused car parks in Torquay Town Centre could be used for housing
The ageing population will add to pressure on our wider public finances as this cohort generally requires greater health and social care. These are services that cannot easily be automated or offshored. So, at the same time that the workforce is diminishing, we have more demands for local hands-on labour. Hence, we are already importing health and care staff from beyond the British Isles accelerating the transition to a multicultural Torbay.
In response to these changing demographics some governments have raised the state pension age or increased immigration. These are not sufficient solutions on their own. Certainly, migration can help ease labour shortages in the short term, those moving for work being typically young and economically active. Migrants, of course, also age.
Some of the support for our elderly and disabled folk will then need to come from the Bay’s 15,000 unpaid family Carers. That’s why so much effort should be directed towards truly co-designing services to empower those of us who care.
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,” Torquay visitor Mary Shelley
Twentieth-century labour markets, pensions, educational systems, family norms, health, and social care were built under conditions that are rapidly crumbling. The traditional linear life course of education, continuous employment, and abrupt retirement is increasingly obsolete. Accordingly, we need to adapt by rethinking how people work, how we distribute wealth, retire, and are supported throughout our lives.
One example is housing. The pressure is to build larger houses on more of the Bay’s greenfield sites. But there are a number of underused car parks and office blocks, empty shops, and redundant and derelict spaces in our town centres. Specifically, areas of central Torquay could be regenerated by many hundreds of apartments designed to support our changing population and bring life back to the town. An urban ecovillage could create new communities and so transform and reoccupy a place that for decades has had a poor reputation.
Torbay Citizens Assembly has been looking at redesigning homes, transport and our public spaces
We need to embrace more flexible patterns of work, retraining, and phased retirement, alongside efforts to promote lifelong learning. The Torbay Citizens Assembly, for instance, has been looking at redesigning homes, transport and our public spaces to support independence and social connections.
Though these demographic changes are unfolding gradually their effects are now being seen across the Bay in many places: in classrooms, in health and social care, in our retail and entertainment offer, in our increasingly multicultural communities, and in the shifting relationships between generations.
On the other hand, while we do have projections of what the Bay will look like in the coming years, these projections, however well informed, are not forecasts. We don’t know how society will evolve and there are many variables, or ‘futureshocks’, that we could be taking into account; such as another pandemic, climate change, international conflicts, mass migrations, alongside advances in healthcare and technology.
Nevertheless, we do need ongoing debates based on what we do know. And we do have agency and can make informed choices about what comes next. By being aware of our past and where we are now, we can prepare for and adapt to the challenges and opportunities of twenty-first century Torbay.
‘Torquay: A Social History’ by local author Kevin Dixon is available for £10 from Artizan Gallery, Fleet Street, Torquay. or:
https://www.art-hub.co.uk/product-page/torquay-a-social-history-by-kevin-dixon
