10/01/2023
The Office for National Statistics has issued the first headline figures of equalities characteristics as monitored by the 2021 Census. There are 262,000 people living in England and Wales in March 2021 who identified with a gender different from their sex registered at birth. Some thirty thousand people identified as non-binary. Seven hundred and forty eight thousand people identified as gay or lesbian, with six hundred and twenty four thousand as bisexual, one hundred and twelve thousand as pansexual, and twenty eight thousand as asexual. In terms of geographic breakdown, there were some surprises. London and Brighton, perhaps not unexpectedly, had a large LGBTQIA population. However, Ceredigion in West Wales, had sizeable trans and LGB populations. “ShoutOut” Radio’s Terry Starr, who was once based in Ceredigion, and worked with hospital radio channel Radio Bronglais on LGBT programming, said that even in the nineteen nineties, Ceredigion, with its large numbers of people who had moved there as part of the communal living and “back to the land” countercultures of the seventies, was noted for a sizeable LGBTQIA population. Some LGBTQIA and progressive activists have pointed out that the Census figures may be inaccurate because, although technically illegal to falsify information, many people choose to give inaccurate information for a variety of political reasons and sometimes for a very British resentment at what is sometimes considered intrusive questioning.
