(Bloomberg) -- The population of the U.K. was estimated at almost 66.5 million as of the middle of 2018, 0.6% more than a year earlier.
The growth rate was unchanged from 2017, with the increase of almost 400,000 people driven by net migration rather than the balance of births and deaths, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday.
The four local authorities with the fastest-growing populations were all in central London -- City of London, Westminster, Camden and Tower Hamlets.
The U.K. population stands at a record but the growth rates over the past two years were the weakest since 2004, when Britain opened its doors to newly admitted members of the European Union such as Poland and Hungary.
In the year to mid-2018, there were the fewest births in over a decade and the highest number of deaths since the turn of the century, while migrants arriving in the U.K. outnumbered departures by 275,000, up 45,000 compared with the previous year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Atkinson in London at a.atkinson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at fobrien@bloomberg.net, Brian Swint
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