Consultation on the 2014-based Subnational Population Projections for England

Background

The 2014-based subnational population projections provide indicative figures of the population from mid-2014 to mid-2039, based on continuation of recent trends.

From 18 January 2016 to 26 February 2016, we consulted on the 2014-based subnational population projections. This was to improve our understanding of what users need from subnational projections and related outputs. We also gave English local authority and county council representatives an opportunity to see and comment on the provisional projections for their area.

We asked

What changes would you like us to make to the Subnational Population Projections?

You said

• Users asked for variant subnational population projections.

• Users asked for more supporting information to be made available with each release

• Users asked for subnational population projections to continue to be produced every two years.

• Some users expressed concern regarding the assumptions used for international migration.

• Issues surrounding some aspects of the methodology were raised. These included the issue of returning armed forces from abroad, estimating asylum seekers and trend periods for internal and international migration.

We did

• We plan to publish initial research into variant subnational projections in Summer 2016. This work is expected to cover the production of several variants as ‘proof of concept’, and will invite user comment on the usefulness of such variants.

• We intend to make the 2014-based subnational population projections available on NOMIS as well as the ONS Data Explorer at which point the projections will be available in xls, xlsx, xml and csv formats.

• Since the majority of users asked for us to continue to produce subnational population projections every two years, we shall continue to do so.

• More supporting information to accompany the projections will be taken forward as part of our future work. This could include provision of additional information on the methodology and assumptions comparisons with previous projections.

• Other comments are being used to decide priorities for our research before the production of the next set of projections.