Westminster Council UK. Have we been misinformed about the number of legal immigrants? (A post was originally made 18th November 2011, but was later accidentally deleted. The present article, posted today, 19th December 2011, is a replacement).
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has the responsibility of estimating the number of legal immigrants there are in the UK, and also the number in each local authority area.
However local councils have themselves a way of estimating the number of legal immigrants, since they pay taxes (or are supposed to do so!). And when the local authority Westminster Council (WCC) in London did this check, it found their estimated number of legal immigrants went up between2006 and 2010 whereas the ONS estimated the number had gone down!
So the council produced a press release entitled :
“Westminster Council (WCC) warns new immigration figures don’t add up.”
This document reported:
“The new figures suggest that Westminster has lost 17% (10,000) of incoming migrants between 2006–10.”
Now the Westminster Council learnt that they were not the only local authority in this position and the press release went to say:
“Cities such as Manchester and Bristol are also reported to have lost up to 35% (30,000 people) of their incoming migrant populations over the same period, compared to data previously released by the ONS.”