Another batch of detailed population statistics from the 2021 census has been published this month. The ONS has crunched the figures and done some fascinating analysis with conclusions, graphs and maps, which you can read here: population/migration/households/age
The interactive maps are particularly good, colouring in the country to show how the data varies, so you should definitely go and play with those if you're interested.
And there are spreadsheets, which is great because it gives amateur statisticians a chance to bash the figures too, which I have duly done. I've done this mainly because I think I live in the biggest outlier of all, the borough of Tower Hamlets, where the population figures are entirely unlike anywhere else. So let's see how extreme we are.
Tower Hamlets doesn't appear in this list, the top five are all larger outer London boroughs. With a population of 310,300 Tower Hamlets is only just in the top ten (behind Enfield, Bromley, Wandsworth and Lambeth), sharing tenth place with Redbridge. But what's extraordinary is how fast it's climbing the list. In 1991 Tower Hamlets was in 28th place, which out of 33 boroughs was pretty much scraping the bottom. By 2001 it had climbed to 23rd and in 2011 it was 17th, i.e. bang in the middle of the list. And now it's 10th, up a massive 18 places in 30 years.
And this is because the population of Tower Hamlets is growing faster than any other local authority in the country.
England's fastest growing local authorities (2011-2021)
Tower Hamlets +22%
Dartford +20%
Bedford, Barking and Dagenham, Cambridge, Peterborough +18%
A 22% population increase in ten years (over 2% a year!) is really going some. There are many reasons for this upward surge, but the main one is that more homes are being built in Tower Hamlets than anywhere else in England.
Biggest increase in number of households (2011-2021)
Tower Hamlets +19%
Uttlesford +18%
Bedford +17%
We have flats shooting up in Docklands, around the Isle of Dogs and along the Lea from Poplar to Fish Island, because former industrial land translates well into boxy towers. What's extraordinary is that this is the second census in a row when Tower Hamlets has had the fastest increase in households (2001-2011 was +29%) and I wouldn't bet against there being a third. To put it another way, the number of homes in Tower Hamlets is up by over 50% since the turn of the century. We're packing them in.
England's densest local authorities
Tower Hamlets 15,695 per km2
Islington 14,578 per km2
Hackney 13,611 per km2
Lambeth 11,848 per km2
Kensington and Chelsea 11,828 per km2
All those people crammed into just 20 square kilometres is why Tower Hamlets has the highest population density in the country. At the last census Islington held the title but Tower Hamlets has now nudged ahead and shows no sign of ever nudging back. You rural folk may whinge about a developer wanting to build detached homes on a pretty field, but we've upped our population density by 22% since 2011 - you can't compete.
Local authorities with the most people born abroad
Brent, Westminster 56%
Kensington & Chelsea, Newham 54%
Harrow, Ealing 51%
We're not the local authority with the greatest proportion of foreign-born residents, with 47% we're only just in the top 10. But these are all extraordinary figures - this isn't just "from an ethnic minority", this is "actually born abroad". Six London boroughs are majority foreign-born, thanks to migration from a broad spread of foreign countries. According to the ONS the top foreign birthplaces are India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania and Ireland. The national average is 16%, or one in six.
Tower Hamlets is also one of only a few local authorities in the country where most of the population is male (a 50.2%/49.8% split). Nationally the proportion is 49% male/51% female, but about a dozen places have more men than women, generally marginally so, including Southampton, Rutland, West Suffolk and Salford. The City of London has by far the highest preponderance of males at 55%.
It's not easy to summarise the data on deprivation, although the maps allow you to zoom in and find the richer/poorer neighbourhoods near you. The London boroughs of Brent, Newham and Barking & Dagenham stand out, as do several inner city areas in the Midlands and the North and a few seaside towns. But although Tower Hamlets has several areas of poverty, especially around Whitechapel, the wealth of Docklands and other newbuild neighbourhoods yanks the borough nearer to the average.
And then there's age. Tower Hamlets is not an old borough.
Local authorities with the fewest over 65s
Tower Hamlets 5%
Newham 7%
Southwark, Hackney 8%
Slough, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Wandsworth 9%
No local authority has fewer old people than Tower Hamlets, which is good news for the council when it comes to paying care bills. Nationally the proportion is 11%, with North Norfolk topping the scales at 33%. Tower Hamlets' extreme demography isn't because we have a lot of children, we're only just above average on that front. The real difference is because we have the greatest number of adults of working age, (well, us and Lambeth) at 76% of the population.
Local authorities with the lowest median age
Tower Hamlets 30
Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham, Manchester 31
Hackney, Newham 32
In England there are as many under-40s as over 40s because 40 is the median age. But in Tower Hamlets our median age is 30, which is astonishingly low, because what we have are a heck of a lot of twenty-somethings. They've moved here from abroad or from elsewhere in the country, often into our new blocks of flats, drawn here by financial services in Docklands or the less skyhigh parts of the economy. A significant number are students, as you can surmise by the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge having the second-lowest median age.
If Tower Hamlets bores you then you should try exploring your own local authority, which you can best do on the interactive maps, or by means of an automated census report. That's how I found out I live in the fastest growing, densest, least old, youngest local authority in the whole of the country. It's extraordinary.
