UK net migration falls to lowest level since early 2021

Net migration to the United Kingdom fell to 171,000 in the year ending December 2025, the lowest level seen since early 2021 and nearly half the updated 331,000 recorded a year earlier. The drop gives Keir Starmer’s government political ammunition as it argues it is restoring control of the border, but the numbers also show a more complicated picture: policy changes helped, and so did shifts in who was arriving, who was leaving and how the statistics are being measured.

The biggest driver was a 47% fall in the number of non-EU+ nationals coming to work. Overall net migration from non-EU countries has now fallen by two-thirds from its 2023 peak. The Office for National Statistics said the latest figures are provisional, remain official statistics in development and can still be revised. It also said British and EU net migration were both negative in the latest period, meaning more people left the country than arrived over the past 12 months.

British nationals’ net migration was broadly stable at negative 136,000, while EU+ net migration was negative 42,000 in the year ending December 2025. The ONS said annual international net migration has dropped by three-quarters of a million people since its peak in early 2023, and that emigration may now be starting to fall, although it is too soon to know whether that will continue.

The figures land against a backdrop of policy tightening. The government published its immigration white paper on 12 May 2025, saying it wanted to reshape the system toward higher skills and reduce record-high migration. The ONS said net migration for the year ending December 2024 had already fallen to 431,000 after policy changes restricting work and study visa routes, especially for student dependants.

Still, the latest fall does not by itself prove that the government has fully regained control. The ONS said the new level was last seen in early 2021, when the new immigration system had just been introduced and COVID-19 travel restrictions were still in place. The agency also revised its British migration estimates back to June 2021 using Department for Work and Pensions data rather than the International Passenger Survey, which had historically underestimated British emigration.

Earlier ONS figures show how sharply the picture has shifted. Net migration was 728,000 in the year ending June 2024, 906,000 in the year ending June 2023 after revision, and 685,000 in the year ending December 2023. The trend is unmistakable. What remains open is how much of the decline reflects durable policy change, and how much reflects temporary movement patterns that could shift again.