Accredited official statistics

How many people come to the UK each year?

Published 29 November 2018

Back to ‘Immigration Statistics, year ending September 2018’ content page.

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See section 6 of the ‘About this release’ section for more details.

Data relate to the year ending September 2018 and all comparisons are with the year ending September 2017, unless indicated otherwise.

This section contains data on:

• the number of arrivals by people entering the UK
• grants of Entry clearance visas to individuals outside the UK, including dependants unless stated otherwise

We provide a more detailed commentary on an annual basis. This is included in ‘Immigration statistics, year ending June 2018’.

1. Immigration to the UK

There were 140.9 million passenger arrivals in the year ending September 2018 (including returning UK residents) an increase of 4.6 million (or 3%) compared to the previous year and a record number. There were increases in arrivals from:

• British, other EEA and Swiss nationals, up 2.7 million (or 2%) to 120.1 million; data from the year ending June 2018 (the latest available) suggests that around one-third were EEA and Swiss nationals
• non-EEA nationals, up 1.8 million (or 10%) to 20.8 million; data from 2017 (the latest available by nationality) suggest that around 29% of these were US nationals

The majority of non-EEA nationals do not require a visa to visit or transit the UK; although they do still require a visa to come for other reasons. Therefore, the number of arrivals will be much higher than the number of visas granted.

There were over 2.8 million visas granted in the year ending September 2018, an increase of 167,490 (or 6%) compared with the previous year, continuing the upward trend seen over the last decade. The latest increase was driven mainly by:

• a 6% increase in Visitor visas granted, up 120,318 to 2.2 million
• a 7% increase in Tier 4 (Sponsored study) visas granted, up 15,432 to 239,595

Of the 2.8 million visas granted, over three-quarters were to visit, 8% were to study and 6% to work. The two most common nationalities granted visas, Chinese and Indians, together accounted for 45% of the total number of visas (25% and 20% respectively).

EEA and Swiss nationals do not currently require a visa to come for any reason.

Figure 1: Passenger arrivals to the UK by nationality group, year ending September 2009 to 2018¹

Source:

Admissions table ad 01 q

Chart note:

1. Data separately identifying ‘British’ and ‘other EEA and Swiss’ nationals are published on an annual basis. The breakdown for the latest period will be available in the February release.

2. About these statistics

The statistics in this section provide an indication of the number of people who enter the UK.

The data do not show whether, or when, an individual actually arrived in the UK, what they did on arrival to the UK or how long they stayed in the UK.

Many non-EEA nationalities do not normally require a visa to visit the UK. As a result they will be counted in the passenger arrivals data, but not in the visa data. A list of designated nationalities referred to as ‘visa nationals’ who do require a visa to visit the UK can be found in ‘Immigration Rules Appendix V: visitor rules’.

Data on passenger arrivals are not directly comparable with data on Entry clearance visas granted for a number of reasons. A summary of the datasets are provided below.

2.1 Passenger arrivals

Data on arrivals relate to the number of arrivals into the UK. The data include British, EEA and Swiss nationals, as well as non-EEA nationals. For non-EEA nationals who are subject to immigration controls, more detailed information is available on their nationality and purpose of their journey.

Passenger arrivals are counted each time an individual enters the UK. Where an individual enters the UK more than once in a period, they will be counted each time they enter (but if they arrive each time on the same visa, they will be counted once in the visas data).

2.2 Entry clearance visas

Data on Entry clearance visas in this section refer to the number of visas granted for all reasons. The data count the number of Entry clearance visas granted within the period. If an individual is granted a visa more than once in a given period, this will be counted as multiple grants in the statistics. If an individual enters the UK multiple times within the period for which a visa is valid, this will be counted as one grant in the visa statistics (but multiple arrivals in the arrivals data).

Year-on-year comparisons of the number of decisions can be affected by quarterly fluctuations in the data. Such fluctuations can be examined in more detail in the quarterly data that are available in the published tables.

EEA and Swiss nationals do not require a visa to come to the UK for any reason.

3. Data tables

Data on arrivals are available in the Admissions tables.

Data on Entry clearance visas and sponsored visa applications for the Work, Study and Family routes (described further in the Work topic, Study topic and Family topic) can be found in:

Visas tables volume 1
Visas tables volume 2
Visas tables volume 3
Sponsorship tables