THE number of immigrants in Southampton has more than doubled in the last ten years.

This is according to data from the latest Census (2021) by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

While around 13 per cent of people in Southampton arrived in the UK in the last ten years (2011 to 2021), around 7 per cent arrived between 2001 and 2010.

Before that, the percentage of people who arrived in the UK in the decades before was around 1 to 2 per cent.

READ MORE: New data reveals how much Southampton's population has increased in last 10 years

As of last year's Census, 75.9 per cent of people in Southampton were born in the UK.

Some 12.7 per cent arrived in the UK between 2011 and 2021, 7.4 per cent arrived between 2001 and 2010, 1.5 per cent between 1991 and 2000.

In the decades before 2000 - the 1950s to the 1980s - this was less than 1 per cent every decade.

This means there has been a fairly sharp increase in immigration since 2001.

The rise in immigration was one of the reasons that resulted in the Brexit vote, though Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has recently been under pressure from businesses to have a "looser approach" to immigration to help fill jobs.

With more than a million vacancies in the country, CBI director-general Tony Danker has urged the Prime Minister to "plug the gaps" to boost economic growth.

Don John, a Race and Diversity Consultant in Southampton, said that many services in the UK are "heavily dependent" on migrants.

"There has been a serious miscalculation regarding the value of migrants to the UK economy," he said.

"Unfortunately, the situation we find ourselves in was further stimulated by Brexit, which directly and indirectly suggested that migrants were responsible for many of the problems we had in this country.

"Furthermore, the pandemic highlighted how many of the crucial services that include hospitals, and the night-time economy were heavily dependent on migrant labour and this country’s failure to recognise that has contributed to some of the economic problems we have today.

"Unfortunately, this has laid the foundation for further illegal immigration and the authorities clearly have no coherent plant to tackle this.

"This 'looser approach' to immigration clearly suggests that we could be in for another U-turn which makes a mockery of the Brexit vote, but probably the right thing to do."

Downing Street insists Rishi Sunak is “fully committed” to bringing overall immigration levels down.

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