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Developments in migration statistics since 2010 (published 23 August 2018)

Updated 29 February 2024

This note provides a summary of Home Office developments in migration statistics.

This programme of work is part of a cross Government Statistical Service (GSS) programme, being led by ONS working with the Home Office (the lead policy department), the devolved administrations and other government departments, such as the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), Department of Health (DH) and Department for Education (DfE), who have a strong interest in improving the migration evidence base.

Working in partnership across the GSS is key to delivering the developments in migration statistics and we have been working closely in order that we benefit from the expertise that exists within individual departments to produce robust, collaborative research that adds value. A part of that work is to ensure we can satisfy ourselves and our users that migration statistics are able to answer the most relevant questions of the day.

In recent years Home Office statisticians, in collaboration with others across the GSS, have introduced a wide range of changes to the UK migration statistics. These include developments in the department’s national statistics suite of outputs, and a variety of other research and analysis using Home Office and other data sources.

Some examples of improvements to the migration statistics introduced in recent years include:

Improving Home Office statistics

• moving from a hard-copy format to a more flexible online publication in 2011, including clearer topic based information with much more extensive tables. This was very well received by users and the topic structure and text has been further developed in 2017 following user consultation
• Migrant Journey analyses (‘changes in migrants visas and leave statuses’) provide a longitudinal study of migration by people arriving on non-visit visas since 2004. This began as a research report in 2010 and has now been established as an annual national statistics publication providing information on visa holders extending or changing their stay and those granted settlement
• in 2013 we began publication of new data on work and study sponsors, providing information on the education sector students were applying to study in and industry sector in which non-EEA skilled workers were employed
• Home Office statistics on asylum application outcomes now include a cohort analyses of the final outcomes following appeal providing a more complete record of the numbers of people being granted protection
• local authority data on refugee support and resettlement is now available alongside the national data on numbers receiving asylum support
• in November 2017 we published experimental data on lesbian and gay and bisexual asylum claims
• 2 reports on ‘experimental’ Exit checks data (published in August 2016 and August 2017) have been published providing information on this new statistical source, including initial statistics on visa-compliance for particular visa routes such as study
• Home Office also now publishes more detailed tables on citizenship and EEA residence documents in light of increased interest following the EU referendum

Working jointly with the Office for National Statistics

• Home Office and ONS produced jointly a range of flagship migration outputs from the 2011 Census, published on the ONS website in 2013 and 2014
• a joint HO-ONS programme in 2014 and 2015 looked at the work, study & family migration data sources and produced publications comparing statistics derived from the various available sources
• the Home Office contributed to the GSS study on National Insurance Number Statistics (NINOs) issued to foreign nationals published in 2016 which indicated short term migrants has a big influence on NINO trends
• the ONS report on Student migration published in 2017 which included Home Office analysis, drawing on the department’s work with the exit data. Work is now underway to extend this analysis to other non-visit visa holders

Enhancing others’ data

• the Home Office initially sponsored a new ‘Why UK’ variable in the Labour Force Survey (on the original reason the foreign-born came to the UK) and published the first report summarising the results
• worked with ONS to pilot a new original reason for coming question in the IPS, introduced from 2012, which attempted to provide a better measure of net migration for students, workers and other types of long-term migrants
• working with HMRC on real-time information, which will in future years be particularly critical for helping to fill gaps in our knowledge

Future plans

We are intending further work to provide more user friendly tables to supplement work undertaken in 2017 to streamline our main publication. As part of this we plan to explore the feasibility of adding further local authority and regional analysis and also additional breakdowns by age and gender.

We plan for continued close working with ONS and other departments. In addition to the work mentioned above to extend their previous analysis of study migration to other migrants, we also want to take forward with ONS broader work to make use of administrative data to gain a better understanding of migration.

We plan to continue reporting on development of exit checks data following our second annual report on this in August 2017.

We have extended our published data on citizenship and EEA related casework and will continue to review data that might be published on EEA nationals.