The population of England and Wales shot up by more than 700,000 in just one year and the main cause is immigration. Reform leader Nigel Farage branded the rise “disastrous for the quality of life for everyone in the country” while Conservatives warned: “The pressure on housing and social cohesion is unacceptable”.

There were an estimated 61.8 million people in England and Wales in mid-2024, up by 706,881 since mid-2023 according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics. The increase is more than the populations of Manchester, Liverpool or Leeds, if just the cities themselves are considered. It’s the second largest rise ever recorded, with the highest being in the year previously.

There were more births than deaths in the 12 months to June 2024, but this only accounted for a population increase of 29,982.

The rest came from immigration, and there were 1,142,303 new arrivals coming to England and Wales, with 452,156 people leaving.

Opposition politicians warned the massive population rise was unsustainable. Mr Farage said: “It puts impossible pressures on public services and further divides our communities.”

And Reform MP Richard Tice MP said the figures “are deeply concerning and have serious implications for the housing crisis, crime rates, and quality of life across Britain”.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “These numbers are far too high and must come substantially down. The pressure on housing and social cohesion is unacceptable. Mass low-skill migration is bad for the economy and costs more than it contributes.”

He said a Conservative government would introduce tougher rules for people seeking indefinite leave to remain in the UK to cut the numbers allowed to stay. He said: “Under new leadership the Conservative Party has put forward serious, workable policies to get immigration numbers dramatically down.

“This includes a hard cap on the number of visas issued, set by Parliament each year, and doubling the residency requirement for indefinite leave to remain from five to ten years with immediate effect, and changing the criteria for indefinite leave to remain so we can remove those who do not contribute.”

Labour also said the numbers were too high and attempted to pin the blame on the previous Conservative government.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Under the Tories, overseas recruitment shot up while training in the UK was cut, lower skilled migration soared while the proportion of UK residents in work plummeted, and hundreds of thousands of people were given visas to arrive and stay in the UK without any requirement on them to speak or learn English.”

She said the Government had set out plans to bring net migration down. “To be successful, effective and fair, our immigration system must be properly controlled and managed. Out of the chaos and failure of the Tory past, that is what this Government will deliver.”

Overall, the size of the population of England and Wales grew by an estimated 1.2% in the year to June 2024, down slightly from 1.4% in the previous 12 months but above 1.0% in the year to mid-2022.

It is also higher than levels in the previous decade, which averaged 0.7%. England saw a faster rate of growth in the 12 months to mid-2024, 1.2%, than in Wales, 0.6%.

Regionally, annual growth ranged from 1.4% in north-west England to 1.0% in London. The total population of England and Wales is estimated to have grown by 7.6% over these 10 years, an increase of nearly 4.4 million people.