Summary of the bloom Report's section on Sikh's

Date: June 2023

The British Sikh community is one of the oldest minority communities in the UK, but the first major immigration of Sikhs to the UK was in the 1950s. Many settled in London and the West Midlands, and by most measurements British Sikhs have successfully integrated into communities across the whole of the UK.  According to the 2021 Census results, there are approximately 524,000 people in England and Wales who identify as Sikh.’

Data included in Bloom shows that British Sikhs have:

  1. high rates of employment and home ownership.
  2. Sikhs have high rates of high-skilled occupation.
  3. In 2018, over 39% of Sikhs had higher education qualifications compared to 30% of Christians.
  4. British Sikhs tend to place a high value on family life and providing direct support for extended family, especially when they are old or in poor health.
  5.  According to the 2018 British Sikh report, only 2% of Sikhs in Britain have elderly family members living in care homes.
  6. 45% of respondents own their homes, 29% are in the process of buying, and 79% are employed or self-employed.

Bloom’s ‘areas of concern’

‘The first area of concern is the power struggle within some areas of British Sikh communities over who will represent them at official levels and be recognised as the preeminent Sikh body in the UK. Government should take a pluralistic approach to engagement, and the COVID-19 Sikh roundtable set up in May 2020 is a good example of how this can be done. The approach also avoids ‘gatekeeping’, which limits government’s capacity to engage a particular faith in all its diversity and diminishes its integration within wider society.’