ONS data shows most non-UK passports held in England and Wales are Polish

08/11/2022
Culture

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a series of statistics regarding foreigners in the UK. The latter reveals that Polish remains the most common non-UK passport held in England and Wales, with 760.000, representing 1.3% of all usual residents.

These figures are confirmed by the estimated amount of people speaking Polish in Britain. The Polish language is the second-most spoken language in England and the third-most spoken in the UK after English and Welsh. It’s estimated that over 1% of the UK population speaks Polish.

https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1587739984534142976?s=20&t=DpMrZ1b1AA0fXze_2Fg8hQ

In the meantime, the number of Irish people in Britain has dropped by 20%. There were only 324,670 Irish-born people living in England and Wales last year, which is a reduction of more than 80,000 from 407,357 back in 2011. This represents the most considerable drop of any nationality.

ONS data reveals that 86.5% of usual England and Wales residents (51.6 million) held at least one passport and 13.5% (8 million) did not have a passport, down from 16.9% (9.5 million) in 2011.

The resident population in England and Wales rose by more than 6.3% (3.5 million) from over 56,000,000 in 2011 to almost 60,000,000 in 2021, while the City of London observed the largest increase in foreign-born residents.