Early signs of the impact of Covid-19 on the UK’s population growth could emerge this week, when the first results from the 2021 census in England and Wales are released. Estimates of the population size in every local authority area will be published on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), along with a breakdown by age and sex.
There will also be figures showing the change in population since the last census in 2011. The number of people living in England and Wales grew by a record 7% in the decade to 2011, to reach 56.1 million.
A similar leap in the 10 years from 2011 to 2021 would take the population to just over 60 million. Separate estimates by the ONS have already suggested the UK’s population in the 12 months to mid-2020 grew at the slowest rate in two decades, though this reflected the impact of only the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
