Summary

There are at least 15 million people in the UK who are naturists to at least some extent and of those about 1.2 million describe themselves as being a naturist.

About 12 million people have been nude in their garden and one person in five has seen a neighbour nude. There is a surprising level of acceptance of garden nudity. Almost exactly two thirds think that it should be legal, which it is. Half stated that when buying a house naturists next door was not a cause for concern and only 16% would be discouraged from buying. 57% said that is would make no difference to neighbourly relations and for 4% it was a plus point.

Nine out of ten consider naturists harmless and a majority think them sensible (40% to 35%). Younger people are generally more accepting of naturism than the more elderly but conversely club naturism is more popular with the older age groups.

Women are more likely than men to be nervous of naturists (3.1% v 1.6%) but there is no difference when asked if they would call the police (0.9%).

Children and families are often cited as an excuse for harassing naturists but this is a completely unjustified prejudice. The NOP poll asked a wide range of questions and detailed analysis found that the attitude towards naturists of parents was indistinguishable from people without children in most circumstances. They were slightly more opposed to naturism at swimming pool public sessions by about 8 to 7. There was also slightly greater opposition to back garden nudity being legal but the difference was barely significant. The attitude of parents agrees with the objective evidence of harm. There is none that nudity does any whereas there is substantial evidence that prudery is positively harmful.

NOP Poll Results

The National Statistics Office gives the UK population as 59 954 000 of whom 12 057 000 are under 16. (2001 figure). Thus there are 47 897 000 over 16's which gives a probable number of adults who consider themselves to be naturists of 958 000 with upper and lower bounds of 814 000 and 1 101 000 respectively. Thus to the nearest 100 000, there are 1 million self professed adult naturists. Thus the statement that "there are roughly a million adults who describe themselves as naturists" is fully justified. If the proportion of children who are naturists is similar to that for adults, then there are in total about 1.2 million people in the UK who consider themselves to be naturists. The actual number of people who have sunbathed nude or skinny dipped is at least 20 times larger.

The NOP poll largely confirmed what had been deduced from a careful consideration of the earlier much less reliable evidence.

H&E Readers Survey

The May 2000 edition of Health and Efficiency magazine contained a readers survey. This showed that only about 15% of the readership are members of CCBN. If we assume that H&E readers are a representative sample of naturists in the UK then we can calculate the number of naturists. This assumption is dubious for a number of reasons:

• There was at the time substantial disquiet concerning H&E in some sections of the CCBN membership. CCBN members are therefore likely to hve been be under-represented among H&E readers.

• H&E has a significant overseas readership.

• Not all of the readers are naturists.

• It will be the keener naturists that are both members of CCBN and reply to the H&E survey.

If, despite the caveats given above, a calculation is made to derive the number of UK naturists based on the circulation figures for the magazine (25000*100/15) the overall figure for naturists in the UK is 170 000. Estimating the significance of the distorting factors suggests that this figure is an underestimate.

SUN Survey at Studland

This survey was carried out in Summer 1998 and showed that less than 3% of the naturists at Studland Beach were members of CCBN. If we assume that the pattern of beach usage amongst CCBN members is broadly the same as for naturists in general then we can calculate how many naturists there are. This gives a figure of about 830 000. However, because the percentage is so low, even small errors have a dramatic effect on the result. For example if it was 2.5% instead of 3% then there are about 1 000 000 UK naturists.

The National Trust informed me that on a busy day there are about 2 500 users of the naturist beach at Studland.

Newspaper Travel Survey

The Daily Mirror newspaper of Wednesday 17 May 2000 contained a holiday travel survey.

Unfortunately, the sample size, sample selection is not known.

The survey was originally carried out by the travel magazine 'Escape Routes'. We have been unable to obtain any further information. In January 2001 some figures were quoted in Sky magazine. They are the same as in this survey so we suspect that they came from the same source.

The main figures of interest are:

The UK population is about 60 million and 2% of that is 1 200 000 which is in good agreement with the NOP figure. It is noteworthy that 20% of the survey sample are either naturists or aspire to be a naturist.

Weight Watchers

According to a press cutting, Weight Watchers (a weight-loss and diet organisation) carried out a survey in 1989 which indicated that there were about 500,000 people in England (sic)who spent at least some of their leisure/holiday time without clothes.

Conclusions

Prior to 2001 the SUN survey and the Mirror survey were probably the most reliable and they both gave figures of around about one million. The H&E survey figure is quite a lot lower, but as explained above, that was expected given the distorting factors. The weight watchers figure is from a 1989 survey so that is also expected to be too small.

Thus, in 2001 it can be estimated that there were about 1.2 million self-defining naturists in the UK and between 10 and 20 times that number who have at some time sunbathed nude or 'skinny dipped'.