In 2011, 87.2 percent of the total population of the United Kingdom were white British. A positive net migration in recent years combined with the resultant international relationships following the wide-reaching former British Empire has contributed to an increasingly diverse population.

Varied ethnic backgrounds

Black British citizens, with African and/or African-Caribbean ancestry, are the largest ethnic minority population, at three percent of the total population. Indian Britons are one of the largest overseas communities of the Indian diaspora and make up 2.3 percent of the total UK population. Pakistani British citizens, who make up almost two percent of the UK population, have one of the highest levels of home ownership in Britain.

Racism in the United Kingdom

Though it has decreased in comparison to the previous century, the UK has seen an increase in racial prejudice during the first decade and a half of this century. Racism and discrimination continues to be part of daily life for Britain’s ethnic minorities, especially in terms of work, housing, and health issues. Moreover, the number of hate crimes motivated by race reported since 2012 has increased, and in 2017/18, there were 3,368 recorded offenses of racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury, almost a thousand more than in 2013/14.

There were 20,944 incidences of racist hate crime reported by the London Metropolitan Police in the 2023/24 reporting year, by far the most of any police force area in England and Wales. In the same time period, there were 7,466 racist incidents reported in the West Midlands.

In 2023, the population of the United Kingdom reached 68.3 million, compared with 67.6 million in 2022. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 8.2 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 57.7 million people in 2023. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.44 million, 3.13 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.38 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at 8.8 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

The population of the United Kingdom in 2023 was estimated to be approximately 68.3 million in 2023, with almost 9.48 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at over 8.9 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.6 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.16 million, and 1.92 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 622,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 372,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of around 348,000.

This file contains the National Statistics Postcode Lookup (NSPL) for the United Kingdom as at August 2022 in Comma Separated Variable (CSV) and ASCII text (TXT) formats. To download the zip file click the Download button. The NSPL relates both current and terminated postcodes to a range of current statutory geographies via ‘best-fit’ allocation from the 2021 Census Output Areas (national parks and Workplace Zones are exempt from ‘best-fit’ and use ‘exact-fit’ allocations) for England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland has the 2011 Census Output AreasIt supports the production of area based statistics from postcoded data. The NSPL is produced by ONS Geography, who provide geographic support to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and geographic services used by other organisations. The NSPL is issued quarterly. (File size - 184 MB).