Immigration to Account for a New Household Every 6 Minutes

---

March 13, 2009

Government projections issued this week confirm that net immigration is now the largest single influence on household formation in England, accounting for very nearly 4 in 10 new households (39%).

The projections show that, over the 25 years from 2006 to 2031, immigration will account for an extra 99,000 households a year - or one every six minutes.[1]

This means an extra 2.5 million households by the end of the period out of a total of 6.3 million new households, or nearly 40%. These households would not be formed if immigration was in balance with emigration.

The figures also show a substantial increase of 15% in the number of households expected to be formed in England by 2031 compared to the last estimate which was made only a couple of years ago in 2006. There are large upward revisions for the North East (33%) Yorkshire and the Humber (30%), and the East Midlands (21%). The West Midlands and the East are both revised up by 16% while the South East and South West are increased by about 10 %. (see attached table).

Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch UK said, "Yet again the government have tried to bury the true picture in the middle of a 17 page statistical release but they cannot conceal the fact that immigration will have a massive impact on housing demand and therefore on our whole quality of life and our environment. It is time that the government faced up to the facts and brought immigration under control instead of seeking to camouflage the true position".

Table 8: 2006-based projections compared with revised 2004-based projections, by English region

[1] Department of Communities and Local Government web site document "Household Projections to 2031, England". The last line of table six refers to zero net migration that would reduce household formation by 99,000 per year or 271 per day or 11 per hour.