Following initial returns from the 2001 Census, the population of the United Kingdom on 29 April 2001 was58,789,194. A 17 per cent increasesince 1951.
Populations of individual countries were:
- England 49,138,831 (83.6 per cent of the total population);
- Scotland 5,062,011 (8.6 per cent);
- Wales 2,903,085 (4.9 per cent); and
- Northern Ireland 1,685,267 (2.9 per cent).
Compared with many other developed countries in the period 1951-2001, the UK population is growing more slowly.
It is smaller than the average growth across the European Union at 23 per cent, and considerably less than some other countries - for example USA 80 per cent; and Australia 133 per cent.
Projections suggest the population of the UK will continue to grow until it peaks at nearly 65 million people in 2036, before gradually declining.
Census 2001: ‘count me in’
Sunday 29 April 2001 was Census Day in the United Kingdom. A census is an exercise to collect information on the population of a country.
Some 72,000 ‘enumerators’, trained and supervised by about 8,600 census managers, delivered around 36 million census forms to every household and communal establishment in the UK. The processing of the returned forms began in June 2001.
The whole exercise cost about£255 million. Ths sumreflects the complexity of the operation, the 13 years of preparation needed to ensure it goes smoothly, the painstaking statistical analyses of the results, and unexpected obstacles.The answers to the questions on the form are used to allocate central government funding to local authorities for the planning and delivery of local services such as education, health and transport.
Ethnic groups
For centuries people from overseas have settled in the UK, either to escape political or religious persecution or in search of better economic opportunities. The Irish have long formed a large section of the population. Jewish refugees who came to the UK towards the end of the 19th century and in the 1930s, were followed by other European refugees after 1945.
Substantial immigration from the Caribbean and Indian subcontinent dates principally from the 1950s and 1960s, when the government encouraged immigration as a means of addressing labour shortages, while many people of South Asian descent entered the UK as refugees from Kenya, Malawi or Uganda in the 1960s and 1970s.
As of 2000, the largest ethnic minority group in Britain are Indians (984,000 people). The next largest ethnic groups are those of Caribbean or African descent (969,000 people), and Pakistani and Bangladeshis (932,000 people).
Overall, ethnic minority groups represent just over 7 per cent of the population of Great Britain.
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