Population of England and Wales has hit an estimated 61.8 million after a near-record jump last year

Commuters in London. The population of England and Wales has hit an estimated 61.8 million. Photo / Jose Sarmento Matos, Bloomberg via the Washington Post

The population of England and Wales has hit an estimated 61.8 million after a near-record jump last year, reigniting the political row over migration that has fuelled support for Nigel Farage’s upstart Reform UK Party.

The rise of 706,881 people in the year to mid-2024, or 1.2%, was the second-largest by number in comparable data going back to 1949 with only 2022-23 recording a bigger increase, the Office for National Statistics said today.

Net migration totalled over 690,000 as 1.14 million people arrived from outside the United Kingdom, eclipsing the 452,200 who left for a country outside the UK. Meanwhile, 596,012 people were born and 566,030 died.

The numbers will make difficult reading for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is under pressure to bring down both legal and so-called irregular migration, amid worries about the strain that the rising population is placing on public services such as housing, education, and the National Health Service.

These concerns have boosted Reform UK, which is now consistently polling above the ruling Labour Party.

“These figures are disastrous for the quality of life for everyone in the country,” Farage said in an e-mailed statement. “It puts impossible pressures on public services and further divides our communities.”

Protests around migration to the UK developed into far-right riots in the summer of 2024, and Starmer is keen to avoid a repeat of that situation this year.

But already, demonstrations around some of the hotels housing asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be processed - in the Essex constituency of Epping, for example - have descended into violence.

At the start of this year, the ONS said the UK’s population would hit 72.5 million by mid-2032, an upward revision of more than 100,000. That meant an increase of 7.3% driven entirely by net migration, as births and deaths roughly equalise.

It assumed the number of people coming to Britain, minus those leaving, would settle at 340,000 per year onwards from 2027-28, up from previous estimates of 315,000.

Since then, Starmer has been cracking down on immigration. He has proposed restricting a number of routes for legal migrants, including entirely ending the recruitment of social care workers from overseas.

Hundreds of thousands of people had entered the country through that route since it was launched in 2020, but it had been heavily abused by unscrupulous employers charging would-be recruits.

Earlier restrictions placed on migration by the previous Conservative Government prompted net migration to the UK to almost halve in 2024 to 431,000.

The fall was driven by fewer people coming to work and study in the UK.

However, the number of irregular migrants arriving across the English Channel on dangerous small boats has hit a record in the first six months of this year, causing criticism of Starmer and his plan to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers.