Net migration to the UK has fallen by more than two-thirds to 204,000 in the year to June 2025, the lowest annual figure since 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The figure represents a 69% drop from 649,000 in the previous year.
Net migration peaked at a record 944,000 in the year to March 2023, driven by a surge of foreign workers encouraged by Boris Johnson's government after the Covid pandemic. Since then, numbers have fallen sharply, with just under 900,000 people immigrating between July 2024 and June 2025, down more than 400,000 on the year before. Meanwhile, 693,000 people emigrated, up by 43,000.
The decline is largely driven by fewer non-EU nationals arriving, while more EU and British nationals are leaving than arriving. About 70,000 EU nationals are estimated to have left in the year to June, continuing a downward trend since the Brexit referendum, and 109,000 British nationals are also thought to have left.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, cautioned that the fall may not be sustained long term. 'Negative net migration of EU citizens who arrived before Brexit is still subtracting quite a lot from the figures, and this won't go on for ever,' she said.
Separate Home Office figures show the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has risen to 36,273 at the end of September, up 13% on June. There were 51,000 illegal arrivals detected in the year to September 2025, including 46,000 via small boats. The top nationalities arriving by small boat were Eritrean (17%), Afghan (13%), Iranian (11%), Sudanese (10%) and Somalian (8%).
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: 'Net migration is at its lowest level in half a decade and has fallen by more than two-thirds under this government. But we are going further because the pace and scale of migration has placed immense pressure on local communities.' Shadow home secretary Chris Philp attributed the fall to Conservative reforms but said 'we need to go much further.'
