The North East is the least diverse of England's nine regions. At 96.4%, its proportion of White British residents was greater than any other area at the 2001 census, and it had the smallest proportion of ethnic minority residents in 10 of the 16 census categories.

In 2001, the North East region had a total population of 2.5 million. This makes it by far the least populous region of England; the East Midlands, which is one place higher in the list, has 4.2 million inhabitants. The North East is the second-smallest in terms of area covered, at 8,592 square kilometres. The population density is 293 people per square kilometre of land.

• Profile of the North East region, including data on population, health, housing and employment (Office for National Statistics website)

The most diverse town or city in the region is Newcastle, yet even here only its Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese populations are represented in numbers marginally greater than the average for the whole of England.

Population by ethnic group

North East

Population: 2,515,442

Ethnic group/sub-group		Population	Proportion compared to national average
White		2,455,416	97.6% 90.9%
	British	2,425,592	96.4% 86.9%
	Irish	8,682	0.34% 1.27%
	Other	21,142	0.84% 2.66%
Mixed		12,228	0.48% 1.30%
	White and Black Caribbean	2,783	0.11% 0.47%
	White and Black African	1,741	0.06% 0.15%
	White and Asian	4,733	0.18% 0.37%
	Other mixed	2,971	0.11% 0.30%
Asian		33,582	1.33% 4.57%
	Indian	10,156	0.40% 2.09%
	Pakistani	14,074	0.55% 1.43%
	Bangladeshi	6,167	0.24% 0.56%
	Other Asian	3,185	0.12% 0.48%
Black		3,953	0.15% 2.30%
	Caribbean	927	0.03% 1.14%
	African	2,597	0.10% 0.96%
	Other Black	497	0.01% 0.19%
Chinese		6,048	0.24% 0.44%
Other ethnic group		4,215	0.16% 0.43%

Source: Census 2001, Office for National Statistics

The region's black population - less than 4,000 people - is especially small, less than 0.2% of the population. This proportion is less than half that of the next lowest region, the South West. In Easington, at the time of the 2001 census, there were only 18 black people within a population of 94,000; it was alone among England's 376 local authorities in recording zero residents in one of the Office for National Statistics' ethnic categories (the Black Other group).

The North East and London are the only two English regions where the Black African population outnumbers the Black Caribbean one (by three to one, in the case of the North East).

The Asian group is by far the largest of all ethnic minorities in the region, at 33,000 people, or 1.3% of all residents. Following the trend elsewhere in northern England, it is Pakistanis who predominate within this group. A third of all Asians in the region live in Newcastle, where they make up 4.5% of all residents.

Elsewhere, populations tend to be very small; in Durham, for example, which has over 85,000 inhabitants, there are just 62 Pakistanis - one of the lowest proportions anywhere in England.

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