GREATER MANCHESTER
FIGURES SHOW POPULATION BOOST OF ALMOST 300,000 IN 28 YEARS
THE population of Greater Manchester has now topped 2.8 million, according to new data.
In 1991, when comparable figures began, Greater Manchester’s population estimate stood at 2,553,600.
The latest available data, for 2019, shows it was 2,835,686.
That’s an increase of 282,086 people in less than 30 years.
Analysis by the M.E.N. of the Office for National Statistics data reveals the population in Manchester alone has grown faster than the national average.
Manchester’s population has now boomed above half a million.
The statistics are based on local authority area.
In 1991, the population of Manchester stood at 432,700.
Now the data shows there were 552,858 people living in the city last year, an increase of over a quarter from 1991, 27.8 per cent.
Salford saw the second-biggest increase locally after Manchester, with the population growing from 230,800 in 1991 to 258,834 in 2019 - an increase of 12.1pc.
Stockport, however, saw the smallest increase in Greater Manchester.
Between 1991 and 2019, the population of Stockport increased by just 1.7pc, from 288,600 to 293,423.
The North West’s figure population figure for last year was 7,341,196, an increase of just more than 7pc from the 1991 figure of 6,843,000.
In 2019, the UK population was estimated to be 66.8m.
That’s an increase of 16.3pc from the 57.4m people living in the country in 1991.
London saw the biggest increase, with the population nearly doubling in some boroughs.
Outside the capital, Milton Keynes saw the biggest increase with the population growing by 51.1pc – from 178,300 to 269,457.
According to the Migration Observatory, migration made up more than half (56pc) of the increase in population between 1991 to 2018 – exceeding natural change (births and deaths) in most years from 1998 to 2018.
However, not all parts of the UK have seen increasing populations. In Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, the population has dropped by 8.5pc over the 28-year period while in Blackpool, it went down by 6.2pc.
Overall, 22 local authorities across the UK have seen a decline in population compared to 1991.