ALMOST one in four of the North-East population considers themselves to have a long term health problem or disability.

Meanwhile, the region has the greatest proportion of people in the UK living in rented social housing and has caught up to a certain extent with other regions when it comes to car ownership.

Those are just some of the findings from the latest release of results from the 2011 census, which provides a snapshot of the characteristics of those who live in the region.

Commenting on the results, Ray Hudson, a professor of geography at Durham University and one of its pro vice chancellors, said: “The most significant thing for me is the proportion of people with long term health problems, almost one in four of the population (22 per cent).

“That raises some quite important challenges about health and social care, particularly in the context of the cuts taking place to NHS and local authority budgets.

“To some extent this is a legacy of the sort of industries that have been in the region, but it also reflects things like lifestyle.

“Linked to that, 11 per cent of the population are providing unpaid care for someone with an illness or disability.

“With the population getting older that need for care is likely to increase.

“The census shows there are a real set of issues around public health and the provision of healthcare and how that is going to be coped with.”

Prof Hudson said there was still a third of households with no access to a car who continued to be dependent on public transport.

However where in 2001 – the date of the last census – the North-East had fewer cars and vans that it had households, this was no longer the case in 2011.

When it comes to people’s ethnic origins, the North-East continues to have the least ethnically mixed population.

Ninety five per cent of the population considered themselves ‘white’, while Redcar and Cleveland had the highest proportion (98 per cent) of people considering themselves ‘white British’ in the country.

“We also had the smallest increase in the proportion of foreign born residents and the difference between the North-East and other regions in this respect is growing,” said Prof Hudson.

Looking ahead to the next set of census results, he said it was difficult to see that there would any dramatic reversal in the economic fortunes of the region over the next decade, nor in the general health of the population.

“Many of the gaps that already exist between the North-East and more prosperous parts of the country are likely to get wider,” Prof Hudson added.

ENDS