Around 40% of Lambeth’s population is white with a UK background. White people make up 55% of the population. Around 40% of Lambeth residents are White British or Irish, in line with inner London (43%)[1]. 15% of the population are from other white backgrounds – around 47,000 people. About two thirds of these people are from Europe outside UK & Ireland. 8% are from Central and South America, 4% from North America and the Caribbean, and 8% from Australasia.
Black people make up around a third of the population (30.4%). Lambeth’s largest non-white ethnic group is black African (11.5%), followed by black Caribbean (8.8%). Lambeth has the joint second highest proportion of black Caribbean people in London after Lewisham (10.7%) and Croydon (8.8%)[2].
Lambeth has a small Asian population compared to many places in London. Only 8.4% of Lambeth residents are from Asian backgrounds (including Chinese), much less than the inner London average (21%).
On a measure of diversity[3] based on the number of different/distinct groups present in the population at the 2011 Census and the sizes of these distinct groups relative to each other19, Lambeth is the 11th most diverse borough in the country, scoring 4.9. For comparison, Greater London as whole scores 4.3 out of a maximum score of 18, and almost all London boroughs score over 3.5. The most diverse boroughs are Newham and Brent (scoring 9.3 and 8.7 respectively).
These boroughs have both a large number of different ethnic groups in the population, as well as a large proportion of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people. Lambeth has a high proportion of people from non-White British ethnic groups, but fewer groups are represented than in the most diverse boroughs.
Lambeth’s child population is more diverse than the population as a whole. 25% of people under 20 are from a White British background, compared to 39% of the population as a whole, 14.6% of pupils in Lambeth schools are from a White British background, compared to 24% of Lambeth’s population aged 5-17.
[1] 2011 Census. The 2015 figures are from the GLA Ethnic Group Projections, 2014. The GLA ethnic group projections do not have a separate categories for White British and Other White.
[2] In recent years, there has been a reduction in the Black Caribbean population in Southwark and an increase in Croydon.