Natural population growth now sits in three regions

More people died than were born in seven of the nine English regions in the year to mid-2025, and in Wales. Only London, the West Midlands and the East of England recorded more births than deaths.

The figures were published on 29 July 2026 in the Office for National Statistics's mid-2025 population estimates for England and Wales. Across both countries together, natural change added 19,600 people, which is what remains after those three regions offset the other seven and Wales.

Wales is the clearest case. Deaths there exceeded births by 9,200, and that was the largest single contributor to a fall in the Welsh population of 2,800, the first decrease since mid-2015.

The Office for National Statistics projected in April that deaths would exceed births across the UK as a whole from mid-2026. In most of England and Wales, by this measure, it has already happened.

Where the balance has already turned

Natural change is the difference between births and deaths, and the ONS reports it region by region.

Positive natural change, meaning more births than deaths, was recorded in three English regions in the year to mid-2025. London, the West Midlands and the East of England. Every other English region was negative, as was Wales.

The ONS attributes that pattern to two things running together. A long-term decline in fertility on one side, and an increasing number of deaths on the other, the latter caused by the growing proportion of older people rather than by any change in mortality risk.

The national total conceals the split entirely. Natural change contributed an annual population increase of 19,600 across England and Wales, which reads as growth and is in fact the residue of three regions outweighing ten areas moving the other way.

That total is also the smallest part of the story at national level. Population growth in the year to mid-2025 came overwhelmingly from net international migration, which the ONS states continued to contribute the most to growth even though it fell sharply.

The overall increase was 224,900 people, or 0.4%, taking England and Wales to an estimated 62.0 million. That is the lowest rate of increase since mid-2020, and the ONS attributes it primarily to the fall in migration with natural change also slightly lower.

The lowest births figure since 1978

There were an estimated 588,000 births in England and Wales in the year to mid-2025, a decrease of 8,000 on the previous year and the fewest since mid-1978.

That is a 47-year low, reached by a long decline rather than a sudden drop. The ONS records that births have fallen since mid-2012, with brief increases only in the years ending mid-2016 and mid-2022.

Deaths moved in the opposite direction over the same long period, generally increasing despite occasional annual falls. The year to mid-2025 was one of those falls, at 568,400 deaths, down 2,300 and the fewest since mid-2019 before the pandemic.

So the most recent year saw both components fall, and the balance between them narrow anyway, because births fell by more than three times as much as deaths did.

The ONS is explicit that the long-run rise in deaths reflects the growing size of the population and the increasing number of older people, rather than anything about how likely any individual is to die.

The ageing behind it is measurable in the same release. People aged 65 and over increased by 216,200 in England, or 2.0%, and now make up 19.1% of the population against 16.4% in mid-2011. In Wales the same group rose 1.6% and reached 22.2%, against 18.5% in mid-2011.

Children moved the other way. The number of people aged 15 and under fell by 93,200 in England and 8,700 in Wales.

At the far end of the age range the movement is sharper still. There were 15,172 centenarians in England and Wales in 2025, up 21.6% since 2015, and 709 people aged 105 and over, up 34.0% in a single year. The ONS explains that jump by the large generation born after the First World War, in 1919 and 1920, reaching 105.

Two populations that fell

Wales and London both recorded population decreases in the year to mid-2025, and they got there by opposite routes.

The Welsh population fell by 2,800 to 3,175,200, its first decrease since mid-2015. The ONS identifies natural change as the largest contributor. International and internal migration both added to the Welsh population but only partially offset the shortfall of 9,200 between births and deaths.

London fell by 0.29%, its first decrease since mid-2021, despite having positive natural change and net international inward migration. Both were more than offset by net outward migration to other parts of the UK.

The two cases separate the mechanisms cleanly. Wales lost population because of its age structure. London lost population because of where people moved within the UK, while its births still outnumbered its deaths.

The age gap between the two countries is measurable and widening in effect rather than in size. Median age reached 40.6 years in England and 43.2 in Wales. The old-age-dependency ratio, which counts people of pensionable age for every 1,000 of working age and is used in government financial planning, stood at 280 for England and 336 for Wales.

Underneath the national figure the local picture also narrowed. The population increased in 240 of 318 local authorities, or 75%, which the ONS notes is markedly lower than each of the previous three years, when 94% or more recorded an increase.

Rugby had the highest annual growth at 2.4%. The Isles of Scilly fell 3.5% and Camden fell 1.8%, though the ONS notes that the very small population of the Isles of Scilly often produces outlying results.

An abandoned plan and a large revision

Two things in this release change how the numbers themselves should be read, and both are disclosed rather than announced.

The first is a reversal. In its mid-2024 bulletin the ONS stated an intention for modelled admin-based population estimates to become the official estimates of the population in 2026. In this release it states that this is no longer its aim. Instead it will make iterative improvements to the data and methods behind the components of change, focused on internal migration and on breaking long-term international migration estimates down to local authority level.

The second is the scale of the revisions to earlier years. Estimates for mid-2022, mid-2023 and mid-2024 have been revised using long-term international migration data published in May 2026. The totals moved by 43,800 up, 56,000 up and 21,600 down respectively, all small in proportional terms and all inside the confidence intervals of the previous estimates.

The age breakdown of those revisions is not small. The under-16 population was revised down by 40,800 for mid-2022, by 89,700 for mid-2023 and by 139,000 for mid-2024, the last of those being 1.23% of that age group.

A revision of that size to the child population matters because these estimates are used as denominators for rates and ratios, and because school and childcare planning works from them.

The migration figures behind the revisions moved further still. Immigration to England and Wales was 816,500 in the year to mid-2025, down from 1,197,500 the previous year. Emigration rose to 604,800 from 584,900. Net international migration fell to 211,700 from 612,500.

What the estimates will not carry

Every figure above is an estimate carrying statistical uncertainty, and the ONS sets out where that uncertainty is largest.

Mid-year estimates are produced by rolling a census base forward using components of change. Uncertainty is lowest immediately after a census and greatest immediately before the next one, because errors accumulate across each year of rolling forward. Census 2021 is now four years behind these figures and Census 2031 is six years ahead.

Uncertainty is also greater for smaller geographies and for narrower age and sex bands. The ONS publishes confidence intervals alongside local authority figures, and they are wide enough to matter. Camden's mid-2025 estimate of 216,658 carries an interval of plus or minus 13,696, which is more than seven times the size of the population fall recorded for Wales.

Three specific things the ONS says these statistics cannot do. They cannot be added to a time series from previous releases, because the full series published with this release should be used instead. They cannot be combined with the provisional UK and Scotland figures to derive Northern Ireland. And small differences between areas or over time should not be read as real without regard to the intervals around them.

Estimates from mid-2022 onwards remain subject to regular revision while migration methods develop, and all of them will be revised again once Census 2031 results arrive.

Three things follow from this release rather than from any single number in it. The UK-wide estimates incorporating Scotland and Northern Ireland come later in the year and will show whether the regional pattern described above holds across the whole country. The next round of national projections will test the mid-2026 crossover date against outturn that is now partly available.

And the abandoned admin-based estimates programme means the improvements the ONS has substituted for it, on internal migration and local authority migration breakdowns, become the thing to watch, because they determine how much the revisions in the next release are likely to move.

Primary sources are the ONS Population estimates for England and Wales, mid-2025, released 29 July 2026, the 2024-based national population projections, the long-term international migration bulletin, the estimates of the very old and the quality and methods guide.