An analysis of the Office for National Statistics’ estimates of population change, year-ending June 2025.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that the population of England and Wales reached 62,009,993 by mid‑2025, an increase of 224,874 on the previous year. That is growth of about 0.36%.

Migration continues to be nearly the whole of population growth

Of the 224,874 additional residents, net international migration contributed 211,691. Natural change (births minus deaths) added just 19,624. Net internal migration to the rest of the United Kingdom removed 5,940, and statistical adjustments a further 501. Net international migration therefore accounts for 94% of total population change.

England’s figures, as the most populous-nation, are where this national trend is most visible. Its population reached 58,834,812, up 227,642, of which net international migration supplied 210,034 (92%). Natural change contributed 28,792, and England lost 10,816 people on net to the rest of the United Kingdom.

Had net international migration been zero, England and Wales would have grown by roughly 13,000 people — a rate of about 0.02%. Everything above that line is migration.

This is not a one‑year anomaly. It reflects a structural change in British demography: the natural surplus that drove population growth for most of the post‑war period has effectively disappeared. Births now barely exceed deaths nationally, and in most regions they no longer do. Whatever the merits of any particular immigration policy, the arithmetic is now unambiguous: the size of the population is determined by decisions about visas rather than by demographic momentum.

What follows, and the implications

Three conclusions follow from these figures.

1. First, population growth in England and Wales is now a direct function of immigration policy. The relationship between net migration and population change is close to one‑to‑one, which means that any target for population size or growth is, in practice, a visa policy question rather than a demographic forecast.
   
2. Second, infrastructure planning based on net population change at local level will systematically misjudge demand. Birmingham lost 5,960 residents while receiving 26,920 arrivals. Housing need, school places and health provision in that authority cannot be inferred from the first number. Local authorities should be planning against gross flows, and the arrivals and departures data now published at regional level should be extended to districts so that they can.
   
3. Third, the redistribution effect deserves explicit attention. Growth in the shires and on the coast is largely composed of people leaving the cities that are receiving the largest international inflows. Whether that movement reflects housing costs, school preference, congestion or something else is not answerable from these statistics; but its scale, at 131,961 net departures from London alone, makes it one of the most significant demographic movements currently underway in Britain, and one that receives a small fraction of the attention given to the net migration headline.

The scale behind the net figure

Net figures materially understate the volume of movement. 816,535 people arrived in England and Wales from abroad during the year and 604,844 left: 1.42 million border crossings, equivalent to 2.3% of the resident population, producing a net gain of 211,691. Arrivals alone came to 363% of total population change, and to just under the population of Leeds, England’s second‑largest local authority district, over twelve months.

The ratio of arrivals to net population change runs from 158% in the Eastern region to 410% in Yorkshire and the Humber, where 63,934 arrivals and 48,762 departures resolved into a population change of 15,595.

The distinction matters for anyone planning services. School places, GP registrations, housing turnover, English‑language provision and local authority caseloads respond to arrivals and departures, not to the net residual left after the two are subtracted. Planning to the net figure systematically understates the demands actually placed on local infrastructure.

Wales is shrinking

Wales lost 2,768 residents, falling to 3,175,181. Its natural change was –9,168; deaths exceeding births by a substantial margin. Internal migration from England added 4,876 and net international migration 1,657. Without those two inflows, Wales’ decline would have been more than three times steeper.

The decline is broadly spread. Swansea fell by 1,165 and Cardiff by 512, despite Cardiff recording much the largest gross international inflow in Wales at 7,587. Rural authorities are close to static (Powys down 12, Conwy down 14, Ceredigion down 30) while the former industrial valleys continue to contract, with Merthyr Tydfil down 360 and Blaenau Gwent down 119. Wales illustrates in miniature what England’s trajectory would look like without international migration on the present scale.

Seven regions, two different countries

The South East and South West are not itemised in the source workbook. As residuals they account for 75,645 of England’s population change, 32,999 of its net international migration and 57,223 of its net internal migration, against a combined natural deficit of 14,979. The South West records the lowest net international migration of any English region, at 11,311, which puts the South East at 21,688.

Two facts stand out:

1. First, London is the only English region to have lost population (down 26,737) despite receiving the largest international inflow of any region and by far the largest natural surplus, at 54,211.
   
2. Second, the West Midlands is the only region where net international migration exceeded total population change, at 124%. Its population would have fallen without it.

The North West grew most in absolute terms of any English region, adding 56,748 residents, split between internal migration of 23,771 and international migration of 34,627 against a small natural deficit. Of the regions itemised above, the Eastern region is the least migration‑dependent, at 41%, and the only one where internal migration exceeded international migration. Outside London, the six other regions in the table recorded a combined natural change of –10,440. London alone recorded +54,211. Strip out the capital and England’s births no longer replace its deaths.

London as a redistribution engine

London received 234,612 international arrivals, roughly 29% of the England and Wales total, from about 15% of its population, and a net international gain of 51,839. Over the same period it lost 131,961 people on net to the rest of the United Kingdom. Its net internal loss was more than two and a half times its net international gain.

The capital now functions as a point of entry rather than a place of settlement for a large share of arrivals. Overseas migrants concentrate in inner and outer London; existing residents move out to the Home Counties, the South West and beyond. Every inner London borough lost population over the year with two exceptions, Wandsworth and the City of London, each of which grew by fewer than 140 people. Southwark fell by 4,692, Lambeth by 4,566, Camden by 3,900, Westminster by 3,327 and Newham by 2,937, the last on a net internal outflow of 16,235. This is what makes London’s –194% figure in Figure 3 misleading if read carelessly: the capital received more international migrants than anywhere else in the country while its population fell.

The same pattern in the major cities

The London pattern repeats across England’s largest urban authorities. Birmingham recorded the largest population fall of any local authority district in England and Wales, down 5,960. It did so while receiving 26,920 international arrivals — the highest of any district — posting a net international gain of 9,703 and a natural surplus of 6,186, because 21,850 more people left for elsewhere in the UK than arrived from it.

Manchester took 19,418 arrivals for a net international gain of 8,165 and a natural surplus of 3,378, yet ended the year 341 people smaller after a net internal outflow of 11,814. Leicester fell by 3,639, Coventry by 3,941, Nottingham by 4,796 and Luton by 1,667. Each combines a substantial international gain with a larger internal outflow — from 1.9 times the international gain in Luton to 3.1 times in Nottingham. Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool all shrank on the same pattern.

These are not declining cities in the traditional sense. Natural change is positive in nearly all of them and international arrivals are running at high levels. They are cities experiencing exceptionally high population churn, in which the composition of the resident population changes far faster than its size. That churn is invisible in headline population figures and is precisely what those figures are least able to capture.

Where growth is domestic

The counterpart to urban outflow is growth in the shires and on the coast, almost entirely from internal migration. Essex grew by 17,197, of which 13,590 was internal. Lancashire added 16,128, Warwickshire 11,019, Leicestershire 7,971 and Derbyshire 6,304: in each case with internal migration accounting for the large majority, and in Derbyshire’s case exceeding total growth against a natural deficit of 2,263.

The pattern is starkest in rural and coastal England. Cornwall grew by 2,577 despite a natural change of –2,985 and a net international migration figure of –583, the lowest of any district: its entire increase, and more, came from 6,049 net internal arrivals. Lincolnshire grew by 3,476 on internal migration of 6,898 with net international migration of just 63. The East Riding of Yorkshire grew by 4,956 while losing 222 people to international migration.

England therefore divides into two kinds of place: districts whose growth is international, and districts whose growth is domestic redistribution, with the second group’s gains drawn substantially from the first. Neither group is well described by the national statistic that combines them.

Source: Office for National Statistics, mid‑year population estimates, year ending June 2025. Maps created with Datawrapper; map data © Crown copyright and database right 2018 / ONS Geography.

The post Migration and the geography of population change in England and Wales: ONS analysis first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

The Centre for Migration Control recently submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Justice for conviction numbers by offence type and offender nationality, covering 2018 to 2024. The MoJ refused to reveal the data, claiming this might put convicts at risk of identification. Eventually, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) formally required the department to provide the data to CMC. However, despite the formal direction, this week, the Government Legal Department announced it would take legal action to avoid publishing the data it holds.

This seems to have become the government’s default reaction when, for reasons that aren’t always made clear, it decides to withhold information from the public. As Neil O’Brien MP sets out, the reluctance for clarity and official prevarication runs through every stage of the criminal justice system whenever data touch on migration or involves migrants. Arrest data by nationality and immigration status is collected by police forces, but not centrally collated by the Home Office. The Ministry of Justice collates data on prosecutions or convictions by nationality or immigration status, but refuses to publish it. Even the Department for Transport admits the non-GB licence box on the collision reporting form is filled in by police but never extracted; crucial information on traffic accidents involving migrants who would not pass a UK driving test goes unpublished.

Covering up the data is bad enough, but it’s not just the stats that are going missing. More than 50,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals were recorded as absconders as of December 2024, including 1,200 foreign national offenders. That is more missing people than there are asylum seekers awaiting an initial decision. The government’s own report on the asylum system was utterly damning:

“Basic information we would reasonably expect to see, such as the number of absconders or number of repeated appeals, is incomplete, inconsistent or simply unavailable. Officials were unable to provide key figures with confidence, and arrangements for assuring data quality were unclear.”

Notwithstanding withheld data on migrant crime rates, the Home Office has no idea where tens of thousands of people who should not be in the country are!

Migration Watch has long made the case for immigration reform based on the facts and figures. Increasingly it seems the government, having for years known (it’s inconceivable that officials didn’t know) how poorly the facts reflect on mass migration, is choosing to keep data under wraps. The public are entitled to accurate information on the impact of mass immigration and its effect on public safety.  We are now witnessing the absurd spectacle of a hard-up country, struggling to make ends meet as the taxpayer comes under increasing pressure, while a desperate government spends taxpayer money to limit what they have every right to know. We expect better from our government.  

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Migration Watch warned from the outset that this deal would be bad for Britain. Ministers will protest that the exemption applies only to a limited category of seconded workers, not all Indian workers. True, but this misses the point. This is part of a deliberate strategy by India, and other labour-exporting countries, to offload surplus workers, by hook or by crook. The NI exemption was at least agreed by our government via a formal, reciprocal agreement, even if it is a deeply damaging agreement. Other countries don’t bother with agreements; they simply exploit our own foolish visa laws.

Consider what else emerged this week: sanctioned Iranian regime-owned banks hold Home Office licences to sponsor workers into the UK. These banks are allegedly contributing to “the proliferation or development of nuclear weapons in, or for use in, Iran”, yet our government trusts them to import Iranian nationals. Why?

The simple answer is that the register of businesses approved to sponsor skilled workers has ballooned out of all control. An excellent illustration was provided this week by Daxwells Memon: 77 licensed skilled worker visa sponsors on the Whitechapel Road in East London alone, including “Ukay International Fish and Meat Bazar Ltd” and “Javed Phonehouse”. Do we really need to import halal butchers and mobile phone repairmen from overseas?

Unsurprisingly, Indian nationals make up the single largest group of work visa recipients – of the 89,406 work visa recipients since the fourth quarter of 2024, 21,334 were Indian, or about 24%. Given the calibre of companies approved to sponsor visas, how confident can we be that those Indian nationals are genuinely skilled and necessary workers? “Ukay International Fish and Meat Bazar Ltd” will not be sponsoring a doctor or an engineer. Britain is flying blind. We cannot trust the statistics and justifications offered by a government that cannot even adequately scrutinise the companies it permits to import so many people.

The migration crisis is multi-pronged, but the issuing of work visas to unskilled and lower-skilled workers (and their dependants) is perhaps its most egregious element. It must be addressed.  Migration Watch will shortly publish its own report into work visas. Do look out for it

The post We Warned Them: Indian National Insurance Exemption Extended first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

According to the Migration Observatory, over 60% of UK population growth from 2004–2022 was due to immigration. Rapid population growth means millions more people requiring public services, putting strain on healthcare, housing, and transportation. When we factor in the children born to migrants during this period the population increase due to migration was closer to 85-90%. Immigration on this scale makes integration and assimilation impossible; this spells disaster for the future stability and cohesion of our society.

The “island of strangers” that Keir Starmer warned of in May 2025; even if he did regret saying it, looms ever closer; hastened by chain migration under which the Boriswave put rocket fuel.

The post One In, Fifteen More In: Britain’s Chain Migration Crisis first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

She claims the scheme will “save the asylum system for a generation,” based on evidence from a similar scheme in Canada. That country’s sponsorship scheme has enabled more than 390,000 refugees to settle in the country since 1979, including more than 30,000 in 2024 alone. Ministers should look harder at that model, because Canada’s own record exposes the flaws they are choosing to ignore.

Take the central boast, that this is a “controlled, needs-based route”. In the Canadian model, sponsorship is driven by personal connection. When one Canadian agency in Winnipeg briefly opened its sponsorship waiting list, it received more than 7,000 applications in a single week: every one of them linked to a relative the applicant wished to bring over. Ministers may call this compassion, but it is just chain migration by another name; each arrival acts as a foothold for the next. Indeed, academics have found Canada’s refugee sponsorship scheme was used as a de facto route for family reunification.

Then there is the bond between sponsor and sponsored. Canada found the risk of refugees being pressured to repay or work off a “debt” to their sponsors real enough that it specifically attempted to ban the practice outright, a tacit admission that obligation and dependency are built into the model. The Home Office suggests Britain will adopt a similar approach. But, given the rampant abuse already present in the asylum system, does anyone have any confidence that this ban will be policed? A system in which a person’s foothold in Britain is tied to the goodwill of the group that brought them in a recipe for exploitation, strife, and grievances that will ultimately land on the British taxpayer.

And land on the taxpayer they will. Sponsorship in Canada typically lasts only a single year. After that, the huge costs of the asylum system – housing, benefits, healthcare, legal support – revert to the government. Essentially, the Home Office is hoping the enormous long term net costs of asylum can be hidden by getting third parties to pay for the claimant’s warm welcome to Britain.

Details are sparce, and the details the Home Office has deigned to reveal are concerning, but perhaps most curious of all is the announcement that the route will be capped. Why not (as Migration Watch has repeatedly called for) cap other visa routes, and perhaps the entire visa system altogether?

Ms Mahmood is trying to project strength, even as she proposes plans which fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The Canadian model is clearly ripe for abuse and will act as yet another pipeline for spurious migration to Britain. And, once here, the risk of exploitation (either by unscrupulous community and religious groups, or the migrants themselves) remains high. The strongest move Ms Mahmood could make is to dump these proposals and focus on enforcing our existing border laws.

The post Canada’s Cautionary Tale first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

But on the key issues of immigration and accelerating demographic change, what does Mr Burnham have in mind?  

He spent the past year as Mayor of Manchester tilting from one position to another. Like a chameleon, his migration stance has a remarkable habit of matching whatever backdrop he happens to be standing against.

Take “No Recourse to Public Funds” (NRPF), a prerequisite for most UK visas, ensuring there is no access to welfare and social services for recently-arrived migrants. As recently as 2023, Mr Burnham was signing letters demanding the policy be scrapped, meaning new arrivals could immediately use the NHS, council housing and Universal Credit before contributing a penny. Today, with the political wind blowing the other way, he claims he has changed his mind, and now supports retaining NRPF. This is a billion pound question for the British taxpayer – which Burnham are we getting?

Then there is settlement. Plans from the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to double the qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from five years to ten, and to strip indefinite status from refugees, are a sensible step towards a realistic immigration policy. ILR status is the first stage for acquiring British citizenship, which again opens up access to a whole raft of benefits and welfare. During his campaign in Makerfield, Burnham said he “supports the broad thrust” of ILR reform. Yet just a few weeks later, we are told he is considering ditching Mahmood’s plans and allowing huge numbers of migrants who arrived under the so-called Boriswave to continue applying for ILR. This is a billion pound question for the British taxpayer – so which is it to be, Mr Burnham?

In 2016, he said free movement with the European Union was used to undermine wages; in 2025, he said he wanted Britain to rejoin the European Union, requiring acceptance of free movement. In 2015, he implied it was racist to require landlords to check whether their tenants were in the UK legally; in 2018, he threatened to cease accepting asylum seekers, many of whom enter the UK illegally, as he felt Manchester had a disproportionate share. In 2015, he vigorously opposed efforts to expand the use of immigration detention; in 2026, he pledged to expand the use of immigration detention.

This too is a billion pound question for the British taxpayer, tell us what is it to be, Mr Burnham.

What changed? Not the evidence. What changed was Makerfield, where, by Andy Burnham’s own account, voters “raised their concerns about immigration” on the doorstep. Guess what Mr Burnham, these concerns are not new and are not restricted to the voters of Makerfield. The majority of voters in the UK have long held the same views and harboured the same concerns. It is largely why they voted as they did in 2016.

Which Andy Burnham will we be getting, the recently enlightened one or the old leopard with the same spots?  On immigration, we fear it will be the latter.

The post The Ever Changing Burnham Mindset Or Just The Same Old Burnham? first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

Ten years on, five Prime Ministers later, with more than 3.7 million in cumulative net migration, we have published a report asking whether that verdict was ever acted on. It was not.

Net migration hit 745,000 in 2022. That is nearly eight times the upper limit of the tens of thousands pledge the Conservatives put in four consecutive manifestos. It is higher than anything ever recorded under EU free movement. This was not an accident or an unforeseen consequence. It was the direct result of choices made in 2021 by the government that had championed the Brexit mandate loudest.

Boris Johnson’s points-based system, introduced in January 2021, was more open than the one it replaced in every way that mattered. The skill threshold was cut from degree level to A-level. The requirement for employers to look for a British worker before hiring overseas was scrapped. The salary floor was lowered. And the one hard numerical limit in the system, the 20,700 annual cap on skilled worker certificates that had been in place since 2011 and had never once been breached, was removed entirely. Once the rules were met, the Home Office had no power to refuse. The numbers were set by whatever employers and universities chose to demand, and demand surged.

The Health and Care visa, created as a pandemic measure, was left open with no cap and no end date. The Graduate visa, which Theresa May had abolished in 2012 precisely because it kept students in the country beyond the purpose of their studies, was quietly brought back in 2021. Before it was reinstated, fewer than 20 per cent of international students moved onto another visa after finishing their degree. By 2022, 2023 and 2024 the figure was over half. Labour’s own 2025 Immigration White Paper described this as “widespread misuse”. The policy that caused it was introduced by the government that said it was taking back control.

Rishi Sunak inherited the consequences and introduced real tightening measures: higher salary thresholds, restrictions on student and care worker dependants. Work visas fell from 613,000 in 2023 to 369,000 in 2024. But net migration was still 431,000 for the year to December 2024, four times the tens of thousands target.

The proof that a cap works is sitting in the recent past. The 20,700 limit on skilled worker visas ran from 2011 to 2021, was never breached, and helped push non-EU net migration to its lowest level since the 1990s. It worked because it was a fixed ceiling. When Johnson removed it, we warned that non-EU immigration would rise sharply as a result. It did.

The post Ten Years Since Brexit, We Still Have Not Taken Back Control first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

The post Taking Back Control? Brexit and Migration Ten Years On first appeared on Migration Watch UK.

Nowhere is this more evident than in England’s schools. The children filling classrooms in 2026 will be the voters, workers and parents of the 2060s. The latest statistics from the Department for Education show a country being remade from the bottom up. White British pupils now account for less than 60% of the state-school population, down from around 70% in the 2010s and roughly 90% in the 1990s. In about a quarter of England’s schools, White British pupils are already a minority; in 72 schools there is not a single White British pupil. In areas such as Luton, Coventry, Slough, Wolverhampton, and parts of Birmingham and Bradford, White British children account for only around 10% of nursery pupils, or even fewer.

Independent researcher Charlie Cole has analysed the figures by constituency. In East Ham, just 2% of pupils are White British. You can check the figures for your own area here.

Some politicians cast doubt on whether any of this matters. They will be long gone, so why should they care what sort of country their children and grandchildren inherit? The assumption appears to be that this is a theoretical problem that will be borne by someone else. Yet demographic change, and the policies required to manage it, are already reshaping British schools and the way they are run.

Disorder in schools is increasing. Permanent exclusions have risen by 21% since 2019, while 37% of teachers report having been physically assaulted in the past 12 months. One incident involved a heavily pregnant teacher being struck by a chair. Four other attacks on teachers resulted in amputations. Yet even as violence rises, schools face growing pressure to avoid disciplining pupils from certain backgrounds. Activists are increasingly quick to claim that minority pupils are punished simply for expressing “their cultural values and norms” in schools supposedly “rooted in white culture”.

Some argue that the breakdown in discipline can be managed, pointing to schools such as Michaela Community School in north-west London. It is diverse, disciplined, academically successful and, for many, living proof that multiculturalism works. Yet admirable and impressive though Michaela’s achievements undoubtedly are, one wonders whether Katharine Birbalsingh’s methods would be acceptable to most parents. They include mandatory vegetarian meals to accommodate a range of religious dietary requirements; pupils moving between lessons in silence under close supervision; and a ban on groups of more than four pupils gathering together in order to reduce “social exclusion“.

If this is what it takes to hold a multi-ethnic school together, perhaps the lesson is less reassuring than its advocates assume.

What would such a model look like if applied to the nation as a whole? Fragmented communities held together by an increasingly censorious, interventionist and managerial state, regulating what people eat, what they say and even with whom they may associate.

There is, however, another vision: a society built on good manners, civility, mutual respect, respect for the law, loyalty, patriotism, religious freedom and free speech. In other words, an education system and a society grounded in the ethos and values upon which Britain was built.

We, along with what is undoubtedly the vast majority of native British citizens – still by far the largest segment of the population – would much rather see a sharp reduction in both immigration, which remains at more than 800,000 a year, and net migration, which stood at over 170,000 in 2025. Both must be sharply reduced.

At the same time, we must put in place a process for the assimilation of recent and future arrivals into the society they have chosen to join. It is time to abandon the divisive doctrine of multiculturalism and challenge the absurd claim that ever-increasing diversity is our strength. It is not. It is a profound weakness that is leading to the growing fragmentation of what was once a cohesive and unified society.

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