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Horsforth in numbers

Who lives here, how full the schools are, and how much of everything there is per head — from the census, the Department for Education, and this directory.

21,164Residents

8,855Households

19.1%Under 15

18.2%Over 65

Census 2021. Horsforth's largest single group is people aged 30 to 44 — 4,766 of them, 22.5% of the town. That is the signature of a place people move to when they have children, and it is why school and nursery places matter here more than in most Leeds suburbs.

Schools

Every primary in Horsforth is effectively full

Pupils on roll against each school's assessed capacity, from the Department for Education's register. Together the seven state primaries hold 2,145 children in 2,130 places — 100.7% full, with more children than places.

School	Ages	On roll	Places	Full
West End Primary School has nursery	3–11	274	240	114%
Westbrook Lane Primary School	4–11	212	210	101%
Horsforth Featherbank Primary School	4–11	211	210	100%
Broadgate Primary School has nursery	3–11	421	420	100%
St Mary's Catholic Primary School	5–11	210	210	100%
Horsforth Newlaithes Primary School	4–11	416	420	99%
St Margaret's CofE VC Primary School	4–11	401	420	95%
All state primaries		2,145	2,130	101%
Horsforth School	11–18	1,837	1,865	98%
The Froebelian School independent	2–11	114	200	57%

West End Primary is the outlier at 114% — 274 children in 240 places. Horsforth School has room at the secondary level, and the independent Froebelian is barely half full.

What comes next

The cohort behind is smaller

At the 2021 census there were 1,293 children under five in Horsforth and 1,462 aged five to nine — a cohort 12% smaller coming up behind. Those under-fives are in primary school now. Unless families keep moving in, the pressure on reception places should ease before it worsens.

Treat this as a direction, not a forecast. The census is from March 2021 and says nothing about children born since. School catchments don't follow the parish boundary either — Horsforth schools take children from outside it, and some Horsforth children go to school elsewhere. These figures show pressure, not a shortfall.

Early years

1,293 under-fives, 6 registered nurseries

Plus nursery classes at Broadgate Primary School and West End Primary School, and at The Froebelian School.

We can't give you a places-per-child figure honestly. Ofsted registers every childcare provider but doesn't publish how many places each is registered for, and the Department for Education doesn't publish it per setting either. Anyone quoting a Horsforth nursery-places ratio is estimating. If you run a nursery here and want your registered places listed, tell us and we'll publish the real number.

Everything else

How much Horsforth there is per person

Confirmed listings in this directory against the census population. Counting only what we've verified, so read every figure as a floor — the real number is at least this.

Category	Confirmed	Per 1,000 residents	One for every
Health & Beauty	43	2.0	492 people
Food & Drink	29	1.4	730 people
Shops	20	0.9	1,058 people
Pubs & Bars	16	0.8	1,323 people
Fitness & Activities	13	0.6	1,628 people
Schools & Learning	10	0.5	2,116 people
Community & Culture	10	0.5	2,116 people
Nurseries & Childcare	6	0.3	3,527 people
Outdoors & Transport	6	0.3	3,527 people
Property & Homes	6	0.3	3,527 people
Services	4	0.2	5,291 people

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. School figures checked 9 Sept 2026. Age percentages are calculated against the 21,179 residents counted in the ONS age table, which differs by 15 from the 21,164 in the population table — the two ONS tables use slightly different bases. Facility counts are confirmed listings from this directory and will change as more are verified.