UK population grows at fastest rate for 70 years

Britain's population is growing at its fastest rate in 70 years, according to new official estimates.

There were around 65,648,000 people living in the UK at the end of June 2016, up 538,000 on the year before, said the Office for National Statistics. This represents the largest annual increase since the 12 months to mid-1947, the start of the post-war baby boom.

"Net international migration continued to be the main driver, but there was also an increase in births and fewer deaths than last year," Neil Park, head of the population estimates unit at the ONS, told the BBC.

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More than a third of all net international migration was to London, where the population grew at more than twice the rate in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern English regions. This was in stark contrast to 17 coastal local authorities where the population decreased.

London's total population is now a little less than nine million after a huge increase in the past decade - it passed the eight million mark in 2010. The city also has a much younger population than most of the rest of Britain, with a median age of 34.8 compared with a national of 40.

However, the trend may be about to go into reverse. The University of Oxford's Migration Observatory this week estimated the number of central and eastern European citizens applying for national insurance numbers had fallen to its lowest level since 2004.

There has also been a marked acceleration in the number of people leaving London for other parts of the country, "largely the result of the yawning gap between house prices in London and most of the rest of Britain", says the London Evening Standard.

According to a UN study cited by The Guardian, populations in Europe are expected to decline without large-scale immigration, "due to fertility rates in all European countries languishing below replacement level".