Populations of Wirral, Birkenhead, West Derby, and Liverpool from 1801 to 2011

You asked

​I have been trying to obtain information on the populations of Wirral, Birkenhead, West Derby and Liverpool boroughs/districts over time. I've been attempting to use the histpol website but it is essentially unusable, with constant 'the web service is too busy at the moment' messages being displayed. I am looking for the overall population numbers for each of the mentioned regions from 1801 onwards. I am also looking for information regarding where people from each area were born, which appears to have been collected from 1841 onwards.

Any help obtaining these records, without having to return to the histpop website would be greatly appreciated.

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request to obtain the populations of Wirral, Birkenhead, West Derby and Liverpool boroughs/districts from 1801 and your feedback about the functionality problem with the Histpop website.

In order to ensure that we have fully answered your request, we would need to spend a significant amount of time conducting a search of records on the Histpop website as well as searching our historical census volumes to extract the figures you have requested. The cost limit for replying to a Freedom of Information request is £600 or 24 hours work, and in our view we would need to exceed this with your request.

However, given the time, available resources and limitations of Histpop, the team has provided a selection of the data you requested in the downloadable spreadsheet named 'Historical Population Figures_1'. If you have any further questions about this data, please email Census Customer Services.