Record number of same-sex marriages took place in Shropshire

It comes as more same-sex marriages took place across England and Wales than in any year since it became legalised in 2014 and preparations get underway for Shrewsbury Pride.

Campaign group Out4Marriage said the rapid growth rate of same-sex marriage illustrates why legalising it "was so important".

Office for National Statistics data, published during Pride month, shows 74 same-sex couples married in Shropshire in 2022.

This was up from 52 in 2019, and was also the highest figure of any year since same-sex marriage was legalised in 2014.

In Shropshire, 2,401 opposite-sex marriages also took place in 2022 – up from 1,994 in 2019.

Nationally, the number of couples, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, getting married has been steadily rising, including 7,800 in 2022 - the largest figure on record and more than 10 per cent higher than any other year.

Benjamin Cohen, co-founder of Out4Marriage, said: "Far from devaluing the institution of marriage as some opponents claimed at the time, same-sex marriage has enhanced and preserved the institution of marriage in our country."

The ONS data also showed those who did marry continued to do so later and later in life.

In 2022, the median first-time marital age for men and women in opposite-sex relationships was 32.7 and 31.2 years old respectively, the highest figures since records began in 1846.

The Marriage Foundation, a national charity that advocates for marriage as the best arrangement for all couples, said these figures undermine marriage.

Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, questioned the role it plays in political discourse, with the three-year average from 2020 to 2022 still lagging well behind pre-coronavirus levels.

He said: "The public messaging from our political class is that marriage doesn’t matter. It’s now a decade since any cabinet minister mentioned marriage in a major speech, and none of the three established parties have anything to say about marriage in their manifesto."

Meanwhile, co-habiting before marriage was more popular than ever, with nine in 10 married couples doing so in 2021 and 2022, the highest figures since records began in 1994.

The Equal Civil Partnerships Campaign said this shows civil partnerships are a "viable alternative" to marriage, and questioned whether the Government and other institutions support them.