UK Population Growth Is WHOLLY Unsustainable.
The Government must address our unbalanced pension system and heavy debt burden.
26 September 2025 7:18pm BST
Commuters walk along a platform at Waterloo Station in London on April 8, 2024 Credit: Henry Nicholls/AFP The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the population of England and Wales grew by 706,900 people between 2023 and 2024. This was the second largest annual increase in more than 75 years, just behind the year before.
|  | Immigration fuels record population growth for second year runningRise of 700,000 people prompts Nigel Farage to call the trend ‘disastrous’ |
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While some 30,000 of this increase was driven by births exceeding deaths, the vast majority of the increase was driven by immigration into the United Kingdom. This, in turn, is the result of policy choices made by successive governments which have served to increase the number of people coming to this country.
Yet the natural counterpart to this decision – investment in housing, in roads, reservoirs, GP surgeries and the physical capital necessary to maintain living standards amid a growing population – has been evident only by its absence.
In the same year, some 221,000 net dwellings were added to the housing supply. Assuming that births and migration were distributed to the current average of 2.4 people per household, the implication is that we would have needed to construct another 74,000 homes merely to keep pace with the influx, let alone alleviate our existing shortfall.
| | Building homes ‘not financially viable’ across half of EnglandHigh inflation and interest rates are a setback for Starmer’s ‘build, baby, build’ pledge |
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It could not be clearer that Britain is a country poorly set up to handle a growing population. Given that we appear also to have chosen population growth as our answer to an unbalanced pension system and a heavy debt burden, this must rapidly be addressed. The divisions and tensions Sir Keir Starmer decries would probably bite less severely if the economy were to feel less zero sum. DT.
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The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the population of England and Wales grew by 706,900 people between 2023 and 2024. This was the second largest annual increase in more than 75 years, just behind the year before.
Immigration fuels record population growth for second year running
Rise of 700,000 people prompts Nigel Farage to call the trend ‘disastrous’
Yet the natural counterpart to this decision – investment in housing, in roads, reservoirs, GP surgeries and the physical capital necessary to maintain living standards amid a growing population – has been evident only by its absence.
In the same year, some 221,000 net dwellings were added to the housing supply. Assuming that births and migration were distributed to the current average of 2.4 people per household, the implication is that we would have needed to construct another 74,000 homes merely to keep pace with the influx, let alone alleviate our existing shortfall.
Building homes ‘not financially viable’ across half of England
High inflation and interest rates are a setback for Starmer’s ‘build, baby, build’ pledge