Faith and Diversity

Huddersfield is a vibrant multi-cultural community, with a higher proportion of individuals from ethnic minorities than most other towns and cities in the UK: 18% of the population identifies as being from a non-white background (compared with just 8.7% for England as a whole, 2001 census). The largest ethnic minority groups, comprising 8.9% of the population, are made up of individuals of Asian and British Asian heritage hailing from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This compares to 7.8% across England as whole according to the 2011 census. Another 3.5% identify as Asian or British Asian (excluding India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), 3.6% Black or Black British, 2.6% mixed and 0.2% other (2011 census).

The majority of the population identifies as Christian, at 64%, (which is lower than the national average at 71.7%) and is slightly above the UK average (14.8%) for those with no religion at 15.4%. There are a number of places of worship in Huddersfield, including Churches, Gurdwaras, Mosques and Temples, and religions relatively new to Britain, including Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Mormonism and Jehova’s Witnesses all have congregational buildings.

The main ethnic group in Halifax identifies as White (87%) followed by British Pakistani (10%), predominantly from the Kashmir region who moved for employment in the textile industry in the 19^th and early 20^th Century.

In the 2011 census, Halifax was predominantly Christian, at 63.8% (lower than the national average of 71.7%), with 5% identifying as Muslim, 16.3% as not having a religion and 12.8% not disclosing. Much like Huddersfield, there are a number of congregational building servicing the needs of the local communities.