The supplied report says the UK population reached an estimated 69.5 million by mid-2025, an increase of 227,665, or 0.33%, over the previous year. Excluding the pandemic-affected year of 2020, this was the lowest annual growth rate since 1998.
The main measured factor was the fall in estimated net international migration, from 651,700 in the year to mid-2024 to 222,900 in the year to mid-2025. The report links this decline to fewer work-related arrivals from outside the European Union, tighter employment-related migration rules, fewer arrivals through humanitarian resettlement schemes and increased emigration. These are presented as contributing factors rather than as a quantified breakdown of the change.
Natural change also contributed less to population growth. There were an estimated 652,400 births and 647,500 deaths, producing an increase of 4,900, compared with 16,200 in the previous year. Births were reported to be at their lowest level for more than four decades. The demographic balance remains uneven across the UK: England grew by 0.39%, Scotland by 0.04% and Northern Ireland by 0.03%, while Wales fell by 0.09%. Wales and Scotland recorded more deaths than births, which the ONS attributed to older populations and, in Wales and Scotland, lower average fertility.
The figures show a broad national slowdown, but local trends varied considerably. Of 361 UK local authorities, 257 recorded population growth and 104 recorded a decline. Rugby had the largest percentage increase, at 2.39%, while the Isles of Scilly had the largest decrease, at 3.52%.
Interpretation: The evidence indicates that the recent period of unusually rapid UK population growth has largely unwound as net migration has fallen. The smaller contribution from births exceeding deaths reinforces the slowdown, but the supplied figures do not establish that migration policy changes alone caused the decline. ONS projections cited in the report suggest that growth could continue slowing and that deaths could exceed births from 2026, but those projections are explicitly based on current and past trends and are not forecasts or predictions.
