Sources & method

Every figure on this site comes from open, official data. Where a number depends on how a place is defined, we say which definition we used.

Annual population series

Year-by-year figures on our trends pages are official mid-year population estimates: from the Office for National Statistics for England and Wales, National Records of Scotland for Scotland, and NISRA for Northern Ireland, retrieved via the ONS Nomis service. They are published under the Open Government Licence v3 and cover every local authority from 2001 onwards. New estimates are published each year, and these pages are updated when they land.

Current population of towns

Current town and city populations come from GeoNames, released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. GeoNames figures are for the populated place, which for large cities is close to the urban core rather than the wider local-authority or metropolitan area.

Why lists disagree

A city, its urban area and its council can be three different populations. London is about 8.9 million as a continuous urban area, but the City of London alone holds a few thousand residents. When lists disagree, this is usually why. We label the definition rather than pick one and hide the choice.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, it may be a definition mismatch or a stale source record. We would rather fix it than defend it.