In the months following the Brexit vote, net migration to the UK went down by 49,000 to 273,000 people according to official statistics released today. It is the first time net migration to the UK has been under 300,000 in two years.
The latest data from the Office of National Statistics show that the number of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania was at an all time high, at 74,000 – a 19,000 increase compared to the previous year and accounting for 28 per cent of all immigration from the EU.
Statisticians say that the lower migration figure is partly because of the 19,000 migrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries who left the UK to return to live at home.
Earlier this year, the UK government revived their pledge to bring annual net migration down to the tens of thousands.
The 273,000 figure is the difference between the 596,000 people who came into the UK (165,000 were EU citizens and 164,000 were non-EU citizens) and the 323,000 people who left the UK.
Migration of EU citizens from Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia fell by 10,000 to 58,000.
The number of migrants from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania also declined to 44,000, a drop of 24,000 from the previous year.
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