Gypsy, Roma, and Travellers community health profile

Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller community health profile

Overview

The Gypsy, Roma and Travellers community health profile has identified and summarised the national and local evidence related to the health, lifestyle behaviours and wider determinants of health that affect Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Although the focus of this report was health inequalities among Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in Birmingham, the limited available information on health inequalities has resulted in data being used from the UK, and internationally, where available.

The acronym 'GRT' is often applied to government reports to refer to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities but, after feedback from the community, we have not used the ‘GRT’ acronym in this report.

Community definition

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people belong to multiple different communities and ethnic groups.

In the UK, it is common to differentiate between:

  • ‘Gypsies’, including:
    • English Gypsies
    • Scottish Gypsies or Travellers
    • Welsh Gypsies
    • other Romany people
  • ‘Irish Travellers’ who have specific Irish roots
  • ‘Roma’ who are more recent migrants from Central and Eastern Europe
  • cultural groups who travel, for example:
    • New Travellers
    • Boaters
    • Bargees
    • Showpeople

In the 2021 census, relevant population groups included ‘White: Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ and ‘White: Roma’. However, the ‘White’ prefix may not be appropriate, and this has been removed from Birmingham City Council’s suggested demographic data collection tools.

For more information about how Birmingham City Council is standardising demographic data, see the demographics questionnaire.

Population size

Population size estimates have been taken from the 2021 census for England and Wales, using data by ethnic group (20 category dataset).

England and Wales

  • ‘White Gypsy or Irish Traveller’: 67,788 (0.11% of the total population)
  • ‘White Roma’: 100,981 (0.17% of the total population)

Birmingham

  • ‘White Gypsy or Irish Traveller’: 686
  • ‘White Roma’: 1,833

Census data is known to underestimate the size of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller populations.

Estimates from other sources suggest there may be as many as 300,000 ‘Gypsy and Irish Travellers’ and 200,000 ‘Roma’ in the UK.

Health and wellbeing

To find out more about the health and wellbeing needs, and the identified health inequalities of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, download the Gypsy, Roma and Travellers communities Community Health Profile report.

You can also find an interactive overview of the 2021 census findings for the top 19 ethnic groups, including ‘Roma’ and ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ on the community profiles dashboard, created by the Birmingham City Observatory.

Available resources

To help you understand more about the health inequalities among Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, we have produced several resources, including:

View all Gypsies, Roma and Traveller community health profile downloads

Webinar

Watch our webinar which provides a summary of the demographics and key health inequalities among Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities:

You can switch on subtitles once you have started to play the video. A menu will appear on the video screen.

Page last updated: 8 April 2024

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