In 2021, there were approximately ******* Indian residents living in London, the most of any foreign nationality. Nigerian nationals numbered *******, and were the second most common nationality in this year.

In the twelve months to December 2024, approximately 948,000 people migrated to the United Kingdom, while 517,000 emigrated away from the country, resulting in a net migration figure of 431,000.

Introduction

The 2023 mid-year estimate (MYE) is the current official estimate of the population for local authorities in England and Wales. Estimates are produced annually by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the 2023 MYE was published on 15 July 2024.

Comparison to previous MYE data

The previous MYE series (for the period 2012-2020) starts with the 2011 census estimate. Each subsequent year’s population is calculated by adding estimates of births, deaths and migration to the previous year’s population. The 2021 MYE represents a break in this series as it uses the 2021 census as its base.

The ONS revised the 2012-2020 MYE series to bring it in line with the 2021 MYE, so that comparisons could be made between between this series and the previous series. The values plotted on the chart are the revised values of the previously published estimates for 2011 to 2022, together with the estimates for 2023.

Key Points

• London’s mid-2023 population was 8.945 million
• London’s population increased by 76,300 persons compared to the previous mid-year value
• Components of change were as follows:
• 105,100 births and 53,500 deaths (natural change of 51,600)
• Net domestic migration was an outflow of 129,200
• Net international migration was an inflow of 154,100

Population Change

London’s 2023 population was 8,945,310. The first chart below shows the 2023 MYE in the context of previous estimates. There is an uptick after a temporary decrease in population which we attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/763802e7-af17-4b77-995d-44c494fb68af/2025-06-09T20%3A56%3A29/666cd938678c5361c953cb608e532416.webp" width="1152" alt="Embedded Image" />

Components of Change

Births, deaths and migration form the components of population change.

The 2023 MYE value for births was 4% lower than that in 2022, and for deaths 3% higher. The consequent value for natural change (births - deaths) was 10% lower than in 2022.

At -129,000, the value for domestic migration (migration within the UK) was nearly 3% higher than the 2022 value, so still significantly lower than the peak net outflow during the COVID-19 pandemic of -186,000. An outflow of domestic migrants from London is normal and this has been the case each year for the last two decades. This flow is partly because many international in-migrants initially settle in London before moving out to other parts of the UK. The second move in this sequence is counted as a domestic migration.

There has been a marked change in immigration since 2021. This can be attributed to the end of free movement for EU nationals, easing of travel restrictions following the COVID 19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. At over 150,000, the 2023 MYE value for London’s net international migration was more than 18% higher than 2022, and represents a considerable increase from 78,000 in 2021.

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/763802e7-af17-4b77-995d-44c494fb68af/2025-06-09T20%3A56%3A29/cb537d44954e11f7f7b7e2189ae74629.webp" width="1152" alt="Embedded Image" />

Age structure of the population

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/763802e7-af17-4b77-995d-44c494fb68af/2025-06-09T20%3A56%3A29/6d4cf55b96888dbc3aacfc1de5c664ec.webp" width="1152" alt="Embedded Image" />

Future Updates

The release of the next mid-year estimates is expected in July 2025.

The full ONS mid-year population estimates release and back series can be found on the ONS website: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates.

For information relating to London’s population see the demography pages of the London Datastore: https://data.london.gov.uk/demography/ or email demography@london.gov.uk.

An in-depth review of the available evidence for population change in London since the start of the coronavirus pandemic has been produced by GLA Demography: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-change-in-london-during-the-pandemic.

The purpose of this research was to find out what Polish immigrants do with the variation that exists in the English language around them. Do they attach social meanings to it? Do they pick it up and copy it? Or do they do something else? To find out, we collected and analysed language data from British-born and Polish-born adolescents living in Edinburgh and London. Polish immigrants included in the study use non-standard features of English but the patterns associated with their use are not the same as those found among UK-born adolescents. That is, Polish adolescents are not copying native speakers wholesale; they are re-interpreting variation in English. This finding has also recently been reported in work on dialect contact and long-term contact. Our project adds weight to the importance of this principle. This project investigates the phenomenon of integration among migrant pupils and aims to find out what happens to immigrants when they come to a new country. One way to examine this is by using sociolinguistic methods to study the language variety migrants acquire once they have settled in a country. To do this, the project investigates the acquisition and sociolinguistic variation of local and non-local non-standard linguistic features among pupils of Polish descent in schools in London and Edinburgh. The large group of newcomers from Poland represents a unique chance to conduct a comparative study in two locales with different local dialects. It will show how immersion in differing contexts of language variation influences migrants' speech. Sociolinguistic methods are used to document how migrant pupils speak, and compare them to a local control group of age-matched teenagers. This reveals where the linguistic features Polish pupils use come from. By studying pupils' language attitudes and the language norms they're aware of, researchers can find out about the motivations behind different patterns of language use. Attitudes may influence what linguistic features pupils use, and how they indicate through language who they are becoming. Linguistic production data were collected from 16 Polish migrants living in Edinburgh (8 males, 8 females) and 21 Polish adolescents living in London (8 males, 13 females). A comparable corpus of 21 Edinburgh and 24 London-born adolescents attending the same schools as the Polish adolescents was also collected to provide a benchmark for the types of ‘Edinburgh English’ and ‘London English’ to which these Polish adolescents are regularly exposed. Sociolinguistic face-to-face interviews were carried out between all participants and a female researcher from Edinburgh and London respectively. The primary tool used to elicit perception data was the Verbal Guise Technique (VGT). 8 university-educated females were recorded reading a short text about an animal rescue operation that was taken from Newsround (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/default.stm). Efforts were made to match the guise recordings for voice quality and speech rate but the guises all had different accents (representing Edinburgh English, London English Received Pronunciation, Scottish Standard English, Manchester English, Birmingham English, Newcastle English and Polish English). Subjective evaluations to these 8 guises were elicited from the adolescents using a semantic differential scale.

On 17th November 2011 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of their Migration Statistics Improvement Programme (MSIP) released their improved methodology for producing local authority long-term migration estimates within England and Wales.

This Update presents a brief overview of the improved migration methodology adopted by the ONS in respect to its impact on migration and population estimates.

• Improvements to the immigration distributional methodology has impacted on both the estimated number of migrants and total population between 2006 and 2010.

• The number of immigrants in London as a result is estimated to have risen by 129.8 thousand (2006 to 2010) compared to previous figures.

• Ten London boroughs are in the top 20 local authorities for upward indicative revisions in their population estimates.

Open the report here

or Download the data here

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In 2024, approximately 948,000 million people migrated to the United Kingdom, while 517,000 people migrated from the UK, resulting in a net migration figure of 431,000. There have consistently been more people migrating to the United Kingdom than leaving it since 1993 when the net migration figure was negative 1,000. Although migration from the European Union has declined since the Brexit vote of 2016, migration from non-EU countries accelerated rapidly from 2021 onwards. In the year to June 2023, 968,000 people from non-EU countries migrated to the UK, compared with 129,000 from EU member states. Immigration and the 2024 election Since late 2022, immigration, along with the economy and healthcare, has consistently been seen by UK voters as one of the top issues facing the country. Despite a pledge to deter irregular migration via small boats, and controversial plans to send asylum applicants to Rwanda while their claims are being processed, Rishi Sunak's Conservative government lost the trust of the public on this issue. On the eve of the last election, 20 percent of Britons thought the Labour Party would be the best party to handle immigration, compared with 13 percent who thought the Conservatives would handle it better. Sunak and the Conservatives went on to lose this election, suffering their worst defeat in modern elections. Historical context of migration The first humans who arrived in the British Isles, were followed by acts of conquest and settlement from Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans. In the early modern period, there were also significant waves of migration from people fleeing religious or political persecution, such as the French Huguenots. More recently, large numbers of people also left Britain. Between 1820 and 1957, for example, around 4.5 million people migrated from Britain to America. After World War Two, immigration from Britain's colonies and former colonies was encouraged to meet labour demands. A key group that migrated from the Caribbean between the late 1940s and early 1970s became known as the Windrush generation, named after one of the ships that brought the arrivals to Britain.

These workbooks contain the supporting data that sits behind GLA Economics Current Issues Notes 58 and 59.

The Government recently set out plans for a ‘skills-based’ immigration system post-Brexit. To inform debate, GLA Economics has produced two Current Issues Notes aimed at understanding which areas of London’s labour market are likely to be most affected by the proposals.

• Current Issues Note 58: Which occupations may be most affected by the new £30,000 minimum salary and RQF3+ skills threshold proposals? Who works in these roles? How does the list of affected occupations change as the salary threshold is reduced towards £21,000?
• Current Issues Note 59: In which occupations is the greatest disruption most likely from the proposed £30,000 minimum salary and RQF3+ skills threshold proposals?

Notes:

These workbook bring together supporting data from the Office for National Statistic (ONS) that sits behind this work; for reference purposes, they also set out some of the modelled estimates used in our analysis. Please be aware: these modelled estimates have been produced with restrictions on data availability and are based on a number of simplifying assumptions.

Our approach to data imputation is set out in detail in Current Issues Notes 58 and 59 and described only briefly in these workbooks. For further information users are advised to consult the notes provided in each workbook and the original ONS data publications.

This report was released in September 2010. However, recent demographic data is available on the datastore - you may find other datasets on the Datastore useful such as: GLA Population Projections, National Insurance Number Registrations of Overseas Nationals, Births by Birthplace of Mother, Births and Fertility Rates, Office for National Statistics (ONS) Population Estimates

FOCUSONLONDON2010:POPULATIONANDMIGRATION

London is the United Kingdom’s only city region. Its population of 7.75 million is 12.5 per cent of the UK population living on just 0.6 per cent of the land area. London’s average population density is over 4,900 persons per square kilometre, this is ten times that of the second most densely populated region.

Between 2001 and 2009 London’s population grew by over 430 thousand, more than any other region, accounting for over 16 per cent of the UK increase.

This report discusses in detail the population of London including Population Age Structure, Fertility and Mortality, Internal Migration, International Migration, Population Turnover and Churn, and Demographic Projections.

Population and Migration report is the first release of the Focus on London 2010-12 series. Reports on themes such as Income, Poverty, Labour Market, Skills, Health, and Housing are also available.

PRESENTATION:

To access an interactive presentation about population changes in London click the link to see it on Prezi.com

FACTS:

• Top five boroughs for babies born per 10,000 population in 2008-09:
• 1. Newham – 244.4
• 2. Barking and Dagenham – 209.3
• 3. Hackney – 205.7
• 4. Waltham Forest – 202.7
• 5. Greenwich – 196.2
• ...
• 32. Havering – 116.8
• 33. City of London – 47.0
• In 2009, Barnet overtook Croydon as the most populous London borough. Prior to this Croydon had been the largest since 1966
• Population per hectare of land used for Domestic building and gardens is highest in Tower Hamlets
• In 2008-09, natural change (births minus deaths) led to 78,000 more Londoners compared with only 8,000 due to migration. read more about this or click play on the chart below to reveal how regional components of populations change have altered over time.

In 2020/21 there were approximately 696,000 Polish nationals living in the United Kingdom, the highest non-British population at this time. Indian and Irish were the joint second-largest nationalities at approximately 370,000 people.

Annual mid-year data on internal migration moves into and out of each local authority in England and Wales, including moves to and from Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In the first quarter of 2025, approximately 82.4 percent of people born in the European Union but living in the UK were employed, compared with 74.6 percent for the UK-born population, and 74.1 percent for people outside the EU and UK. Since 2006, the employment rate for people born in the EU has consistently been higher than UK nationals and non-EU nationals.

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted both domestic and international migration patterns. This briefing is intended to provide a summary of pre-pandemic domestic migration relating to London, to provide a baseline against which new data can be compared. The Office for National Statistics provide annual data on internal migration moves into and out of each local authority in England and Wales, and for this report we used the data for the year ending mid 2020 that were released in June 2021.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This qualitative study examines Polish migration to London in the context of Poland joining the European Union (EU). The study consists of semi-structured interviews with key informants from the Polish community in London, Polish centres and church groups. There are also three focus groups conducted with recent Polish migrants to London. Recent Polish migration has been seen as transient, involving short periods of migration and frequent returns to the home country. The study explores Polish migrants' attitudes to living in London, their expected duration of stay and their plans to return home. It analyses how Poland’s accession to the EU impacts on migrants’ attitudes to settling in the UK. It also examines the social networks used by Polish migrants and how these networks provide information, practical support (e.g. jobs), as well as friendship, asking if these networks aid settlement or reinforce transience. Further information is available from the ESRC's award web page. Main Topics: Polish migration, EU enlargement, social networks. Purposive selection/case studies Face-to-face interview Focus group

UK residents by broad country of birth and citizenship groups, broken down by UK country, local authority, unitary authority, metropolitan and London boroughs, and counties. Estimates from the Annual Population Survey.

Tweets related to immigration made by Breitbart London between February 2014 and October 2022.

This page contains migration indicators briefings that are produced quarterly. Underlying data is available at http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/migration-indicators

Region of intended residence or former residence. Estimates of Long-Term International Migration, annual table.

This Excel tool enables you to interrogate data annual data between 2004 and 2016 at London borough level released by the Office for National Statistics in the Local Area Migration Indicators suite (LAMI). Data includes: Long-term international migration Internal migration new migrant GP registrations Births National Insurance number registrations to overseas nationals