Office for National Statistics
Population Estimates (mid-year)
Official population counts for every neighbourhood and local authority, refreshed each year and broken down by age and sex — right down to areas of about 1,500 people. The denominator that turns any 'number of X' into a fair rate per head, so you can compare places of different sizes honestly.
At a glance
- Publisher
- Office for National Statistics
- Updates
- Updated annually
- Cost
- Free — open data
- Last checked
- 2026-07-21
RetailPropertyHospitalityHealthcare & life sciencesProfessional & B2B servicesPeople & communities
What your business can use it for
- Territory planningTurn raw counts into people-per-head figures for each patch, so you compare areas on demand rather than on how big they happen to be, and set fair targets and resourcing.
- Market analysisSize the population you actually trade to in each area, and see whether it is growing or shrinking using the consistent year-on-year back series.
- Site selectionWeigh candidate locations by the size and age make-up of the surrounding population — the base number every catchment estimate starts from.
Works with data you already have
- Customer, site or territory postcodesPostcodesPublished per neighbourhood (LSOA) and per local authority (LAD) — map your postcodes to the area with the free ONS postcode lookup, then join on the area code
How to get it
- UK, country and local-authority estimates — by age and sexBulk downloadNo account needed. Covers all four UK nations at local-authority level, with a consistent back series so you can plot a trend, plus components of change (births, deaths, migration).
- Small-area (neighbourhood) estimates — by single year of age and sexBulk downloadNeighbourhood-level detail for England and Wales only. Large spreadsheets — best aggregated to broader age bands before use.
What's involved in using it
- The figures come as large multi-sheet spreadsheets rather than a simple table, so the first job is pulling out the right sheet for the year and area you want.
- Matching to your postcodes needs a lookup step, and different editions revise past years, so mixing an old and a new download can make a trend jump for the wrong reason.
The technical detail, for whoever sets it up (5)
- The neighbourhood-level, single-year-of-age figures are labelled 'supporting information' by the ONS — reliable in aggregate but shaky at the finest grain. Group into five-year age bands, or move up to larger areas, before you publish rates from them.
- The small-area file covers England and Wales only. The national and local-authority files cover all four UK nations — mind the gap if you work across the border.
- The mid-2022 figures were revised in November 2025.
- The small-area file uses 2021 boundaries. To join it to anything built on the older 2011 areas, run the free ONS 2011-to-2021 change lookup first.
- These are estimates between censuses, not a headcount. For the richest single-year detail on who lives where, pair them with Census 2021.
Ask us about Population Estimates (mid-year)
Ask a factual question about Population Estimates (mid-year) — what it covers, how often it changes, whether it matches the records you keep — and we will answer, free. Or tell us what you are trying to work out, and we will tell you what it would take to get this data working next to the numbers you already have.