ONS Launches Interactive Tool for Local Population Trends in England and Wales

The Office for National Statistics has published a new interactive tool letting users explore annual population estimates by local authority, age and sex from mid-2011 onwards, including all Kent districts and Medway.

The Office for National Statistics has launched an interactive tool to show population trends at local authority level across England and Wales, drawing on official mid-year estimates going back to mid-2011. The tool is introduced in Section 6 of the ONS bulletin Population estimates for England and Wales: mid-2025, which invites users to “view the latest population trends for your local area.”

All Kent districts are covered — Ashford, Canterbury, Dartford, Dover, Folkestone and Hythe, Gravesham, Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Swale, Thanet, Tonbridge and Malling, and Tunbridge Wells — alongside Medway as a unitary authority. The figures show annual change broken down by age group and sex, updated from the Census 2021 baseline using births, deaths and migration data, and carry National Statistics designation.

That last point matters for Kent councils and public bodies. Kent County Council, Medway Council, NHS Kent and Medway, and local education and planning teams routinely use ONS population estimates to allocate resources for school places, adult social care, housing assessments and transport — decisions that affect residents directly. The tool allows those organisations to extract and visualise small-area trends without specialist software, the ONS has said.

Residents and businesses can also use it themselves. The tool lets users compare their district against regional and England-wide averages — useful for spotting whether an area is growing faster than its neighbours, ageing more quickly, or seeing shifts in working-age or child populations.

But the figures come with caveats worth bearing in mind. Some local authorities and analysts have previously raised concerns that ONS estimates may not fully capture rapid local change — above all in areas with high migration or large student populations. Those concerns relate to the underlying methodology rather than the tool itself, and the ONS says its estimates use consistent nationally agreed methods combining Census data, NHS patient registers, civil registration records and migration estimates.

The new tool is separate from the ONS UK population projection explorer, which models future trends, and from the Census 2021 interactive maps. It focuses solely on recent observed estimates.

Key information

• The tool is accessible via the ONS website within the *Population estimates for England and Wales: mid-2025* bulletin, Section 6
• It covers annual mid-year population estimates from mid-2011 to mid-2025 for local authorities across England and Wales
• Mid-year estimates refer to the usual resident population at 30 June of the reference year
• Specific local figures for Kent districts should be extracted directly from the ONS tool or accompanying datasets