It's that time of year when the Office for National Statistics releases its latest population estimates for the UK and its constituent parts. Data always lags behind reality so these figures are an estimate for mid-2020. This means... important caveat... "the estimates only describe some of the impacts of the early part of the pandemic on the UK population." [datahere]
I've dipped into the spreadsheet brantub and picked out a few intriguing results. Remember to think twice before jumping to conclusions - population change is always the result of a combination of factors rather than a single cause.
1) The population of the UK just passed 67 million.
It was 66,796,807 when the ONS published their figures this time last year and now it's 67,081,234, an increase of 0.4%. That's the smallest annual increase since 2001, mainly as a result of deaths during the first wave of the pandemic. Births (700,700) still outnumbered deaths (669,200), but only just, while immigration (622,100) comfortably exceeded emigration (374,900). The UK's population passed 40 million in the 1900s, 50 million in the 1950s and 60 million in the 2000s, which is fairly steady growth. I wrote a post about UK population change back in March, so I'll not expound further here.
2) The population of London just passed 9 million.
It was 8,961,989 this time last year and now it's 9,002,488, an increase of 0.5%. The ONS identify three components to this change - one down and two up. First is a net decrease due to migration between London and the rest of the UK (320,000 people moved out of the capital but only 218,000 moved in). This is mostly balanced by a net increase due to international migration (201,000 arrived but only 116,000 left), and further compounded by there being more births (115,735) than deaths (58,812). The number of deaths is normally 20% lower, but it wasn't so high last year that the overall population of the capital fell back.
The population of London has never been as high as 9 million before (even if 9,002,488 is only a marginal scrape). It's also been a lot more variable than the population of the UK, decreasing significantly between 1939 and the 1980s before bouncing strongly back. London's pre-war peak was 8.6 million, a level finally reattained in 2015, and here we are bursting through the 9 million ceiling five years later. Pandemic pressures and post-Brexit emigration may mean 2020 turns out to be a historic highpoint, but we've got a year to wait before the ONS confirms what actually happened next.
3) The five local authority districts with the greatest population increases since last year are all in London.
Top of the growth list is the anomalous City of London whose population increased a massive 12.5% in one year, although that's only an increase of 1200 people, most of which is explained by an influx of residents from abroad. The next four are all adjacent, that's Camden (+3.5%), Westminster (+3.3%), Islington (+2.3%) and Tower Hamlets (+2.2%), with international migration again the most significant factor. Coventry (+2.1%) is the fastest-growing non-London district, marginally ahead of South Bedfordshire. Counterintuitively the UK district with the greatest population decrease is Lambeth (-1.3%), in particular because international and national immigration have both fallen.
4) Tower Hamlets has the highest population density in the UK.
Twenty years ago the UK's densest district was Kensington & Chelsea, with Tower Hamlets in sixth place. Islington took the top spot in 2011, with Tower Hamlets nudging up to second place two years later. The final switcheroo took place in 2019, and Tower Hamlets currently has 16790 people per square km compared to Islington's 16699. To put that in perspective that's more than three times greater than any local authority district outside London, and 100 times more crowded than the counties of Cornwall, Somerset and Norfolk.
5) Tower Hamlets and Islington have the youngest populations in London.
The median age in Tower Hamlets and Islington is just 31.9 years, compared to a national average of 40.4. Five districts outside London are younger, most of them university cities, namely Oxford (28.6), Nottingham (29.7), Cambridge (29.8), Manchester (30.3) and Leicester (31.3). Tower Hamlets was the youngest of all until 2015 so its population is gradually getting older. London's median age is 35.8 years, with only Bromley and Richmond older than the national average. At the other end of the scale the retirement hotspot of North Norfolk has an average age of 54.7. As a 56 year-old I'd be roughly average in North Norfolk, whereas here in Tower Hamlets I'm only a couple of years away from being in the oldest 10% of residents.
Next year's population statistics won't be estimates, they'll be the outcome of this year's Census, and they'll be released in September rather than June. It'll be fascinating to see what the make-up of London and the UK really looked like after twelve months of atypical shutdown. Has the number of new births flatlined, have EU nationals fled and do other foreigners want to stay? These things matter, especially if it turns out London's 9 million and the UK's 67 million were just a peak blip.
