To find mature singles near you, join a dating site built for people over 45 and look at who lives in your part of the country. On Mature Dating Online every profile shows the member’s nearest town or city, so you can see who is close enough to meet. The area guides above add local first date ideas and over-50s groups.
Where single people over 50 live
At the 2021 Census, 8.9 million people aged 50 and over in England and Wales were never married, divorced or widowed. That is 39% of everyone in the age group: 3.3 million divorced, 2.9 million widowed and 2.7 million who had never married. A further 546,000 were separated but still legally married.
The share varies a lot from place to place. In several inner London boroughs it is more than half, with Islington highest at 57%. In commuter districts such as Wokingham and Hart in Berkshire and Hampshire, it is below a third. Divorce is most common among over-50s in Norwich, where one in five is divorced, followed by Hastings, Blackpool and Portsmouth. Widowhood is highest in Tendring in Essex, at 15%.
These figures come from our analysis of ONS Census 2021 data on marital and civil partnership status by age and local authority (ONS). The Census records legal status, so some people counted here live with a partner. Scotland and Northern Ireland hold separate censuses and aren’t included.
How area guides work
Each area guide is written for that part of the country. It covers how many people over 50 are single there, places that suit a relaxed first date and local groups where you can meet people face to face. We only publish a guide when there’s enough genuinely local detail to make it useful, and we check the venues it mentions regularly.
Each guide also covers how dating works in that part of the country: how far apart the main towns are, where people tend to meet halfway, and what locals talk about. In Cornwall that means planning around the A30 and the summer crowds. On Tyneside, the Metro puts most people a short ride apart.
Meeting people near you
On the site, the nearest town or city on each profile shows you who is within reach, and conversations can run for as long as you like before anyone suggests meeting. Your own exact location is never shown.
Offline, a few national networks have groups almost everywhere. The u3a runs interest groups for people no longer in full-time work, and the Ramblers organise led walks across the country. Neither is a dating club, which is part of the appeal: you meet people doing something you enjoy anyway.
Meeting someone local safely
Living nearby makes it easy to meet quickly, but it’s still worth a video call first. Pick somewhere public and busy, make your own way there and tell a friend where you’ll be. Our online dating safety advice covers the warning signs of a romance scam and what to do if something goes wrong.
If you’re new to all this, start with our guide to mature dating in the UK.