Over 65s to increase by 19% over next two decades
Anthony Lewis Local Democracy Reporter
The number of people aged 65 or over in one Welsh county is predicted to increase by 19% over the next two decades.
That’s a finding included in the annual audit summary for 2023 inRhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) carried out by Audit Wales.
The figures taken from Stats Wales show that the total population of RCT is projected to increase by more than 10,000 between 2023 and 2043, a rise of 4% from 243,400 to 254,100.
This is set to include a 2% drop in the number of children, a 2% increase in the working age population and a 19% increase in the number of people aged 65 or over.
Impact on services
The chair of the council’s Governance and Audit committee Chris Jones said at a meeting on Monday, April 29 that he thinks the change in the demographic of the population is going to have quite an impact in terms of council services over the years to come.
He highlighted the 19% increase in those 65 or over which he suspected is going to lead to some kind of pressure on council services.
Councillor Mustapha Maohoub asked where the increase in population is coming from and if there’s any financial support coming from the Welsh Government.
He said residents have noticed a demographic change in their areas.
Ian Phillips from Audit Wales said the figures had come from Stats Wales and were included for information rather than them commenting on them as some certain contextual facts are helpful.
Committee member Mel Jehu asked how they compared to other councils in Wales and if they were outliers or are there the same sort of changes in other areas as well.
Mr Ian Phillips said one those he has seen the increase in the number of people aged 65 or over is relatively common and said there is the ability to cross reference as these figures are all published.
He said there’s a 27% increase projected for Merthyr Tydfil in the number of people aged 65 or over.
Council officer Paul Griffiths said the allocation of funding is based on quite a detailed database of information which includes things like population, age categories, the number of schools, mileage of highways and the number of homes and homelessness.
He said it’s important that they’ve got good data collection arrangements so the needs of RCT are appropriately reflected to ensure they get the appropriate allocation of funding.
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Unsustainable. We need to encourage migration to fill the skills/ labour/demographic/tax gap. This gap is not going to be plugged by 500k plus OAP and babyboomers downsizing to Wales; hollowed out seaside towns full of Airbnb; and youth braindrain encouraged by current politicians.
Might be more in Wales’ interests to promote a real economy that pays decent salaries to encourage our young people to stay. The brain drain, and the replacement of young people by retired people, will continue as long as the WG is content to rely on tourism. It’s not so much their lack of political will, but the reluctance of Westminster to support a scaling down of tourism.