Corrections
Every correction published on this site, collected from the pieces that carry them. Each says what was wrong, what changed, and what still stands. The corrected text stays on the original page; nothing is rewritten silently.
39 findings published · 13 carry a correction · 27 corrections in total · model v8.0
86 local authorities projected minority White British by 2051
This piece said the White British share across the 318 authorities, weighted by their 2021 populations, is 55.0% by 2051. It is 55.1% (55.13%). Two things changed it. Barnsley and Sheffield were being read from records left over from an older model run, filed under their old area codes; they now come from the current records, which moves Barnsley's 2051 projection from 62.9% to 80.8% and Sheffield's from 47.8% to 46.7%. And the previous figure, 55.06%, had been cut to 55.0% rather than rounded to 55.1%. The projection file is now an exact copy of UK Demographics' file. The 2021 share, 74.4%, and the count of 86 do not change.
86 local authorities projected minority White British by 2051
This piece said 15 areas whose projections diverge are left out of the count of 86. The plausibility guard withholds 2051 for six areas below 50%: Barnet, Hackney, Lambeth, Enfield, Haringey and Islington. Counting them would give 92, which is why the published count is 86. The cohort-component model was said to give 54.6% on the same weighting, and the two models to agree to within half a point. That run had read each area's ONS population projection twice, adding the single years of age to the all-ages total. Re-run without that error and synced from UK Demographics, it gives 53.6% across all 318 authorities, 1.5 points below the Hamilton-Perry 55.1%, so the half-point agreement this piece pointed to no longer holds.
Adult social care spend does not track demographic change: the councils compared are mostly one county
The figures in this piece came from a 25-authority file typed into this site's source by hand in April 2026, with no raw file or script behind it, and they could not be traced to any published table. The file gave spend per head of total population, and it gave figures for district councils, which run no adult social care. The piece said the five councils with the fastest demographic change averaged £612 per head, the five with the slowest £472, and that spend ran from £442 (Ribble Valley) to £724 (Blackpool) across 25 authorities. On the published figures, gross current expenditure on adult social care per resident aged 18 and over in 2024-25 is £692 in Blackburn with Darwen, £687 in Lancashire, £522 in West Northamptonshire and £884 in Blackpool, against £627 for England (Department of Health and Social Care, Adult social care finance report, England: 2024 to 2025, Table 14, divided by ONS mid-2025 population estimates). Pendle, Preston and Burnley in the first group, and all five councils in the second, are Lancashire districts whose adult social care is run by Lancashire County Council. The comparison the original headline rested on therefore does not hold: on real figures the two groups are mostly the same council. The headline originally read: "Councils with fastest demographic change spend most on adult social care". It now says what the published figures show.
The 0.68 correlation between asylum dispersal and recorded crime published here is withdrawn
The crime rates in this piece came from a 25-authority file typed into this site's source by hand in April 2026, with no raw file or script behind it, and they could not be traced to ONS tables. The correlation of 0.68 was computed from that file, so it is not supported by published data and should not be cited. The piece gave Blackpool 142.8 and Ribble Valley 32.4 crimes per 1,000. On ONS's figures, police recorded crime excluding fraud in the year ending March 2026 was 146.5 per 1,000 residents in Blackpool and 38.5 in Ribble Valley (ONS, Crime in England and Wales: Police Force Area data tables, year ending March 2026, Table C2, on ONS mid-2025 population estimates). The correlation has not been recomputed. The headline originally read: "Higher asylum dispersal rates correlate with higher recorded crime, but deprivation is the common driver". It now says what this page can support.
Birmingham: 43% White British today, projected under 15% by 2051
This page had not carried the corrections made to the same finding on UK Demographics on 7 September 2026, and several figures did not match this site's own projection data. The badge read 43% → 11%; the 2051 projection is 14.9%. Three rows of the projection table were output from before the 13 August 2026 recalibration: 2031 is 32.8%, not 31.7%; 2041 22.9%, not 20.1%; 2061 9.1%, not 4.7%. Birmingham's 2021 Christian share is 36.2%, not 29.9%: the 29.9 is the raw Census Muslim share, and the two were crossed. The claim that the Muslim share already exceeds the Christian one is withdrawn, because it is false on either scaling, 31.8% against 36.2% renormalised or 29.9% against 34.0% raw (Census 2021 TS030). The projection puts the Muslim share at 47.5% in 2041 and 53.5% in 2051, so a Muslim majority falls in the middle of the 2040s, not the early 2040s. Arrivals from outside the UK in the year before the Census were 1.2% of the population, not 2.3%. Birmingham's decade fall, 10.2 points, was not the fastest of any English city over 500,000 people: Manchester fell 10.6. The piece named Solihull, Worcestershire and Warwickshire as destinations of White British movers and said Census migration data confirms it; this site holds no Census origin and destination data, so that is withdrawn. Census figures from Census 2021 TS021 and TS030 and Census 2011 KS201EW; projections from this site's Hamilton-Perry v8.0 data.
Blackburn projected minority White British by 2027. Three more Lancashire towns follow by 2050.
Blackburn with Darwen's White British share in 2011 was 66.5% (Census 2011 KS201EW: 98,144 of 147,489 usual residents), not 66.6%. Preston's asylum figure, 554 people on asylum support, could not be traced to any Home Office quarter: Preston had 429 people on asylum support at 31 December 2025, the quarter Burnley's 461 comes from, and 407 at 30 June 2026. Burnley had 471 at 30 June 2026 (Home Office, Immigration system statistics, regional and local authority data). Nothing else in the piece changes.
Blackpool's pressure is adult social care, not asylum or SEND growth
This page was headlined "Blackpool is worst on three of the four pressures we track. Asylum is no longer one of them." It said Blackpool was highest of 25 areas tracked on recorded crime (142.8 per 1,000, average 81.0), adult social care spend (£724 per head, average £532) and EHC plan growth (+51.2%, average +39.1%). Those figures came from 25-authority files typed into this site's source by hand in April 2026, with no raw file or script behind them, and they could not be traced to ONS, NHS Digital or DfE tables. The files gave adult social care and SEND figures for district councils, which run neither service, and filed Preston, Staffordshire and Worcestershire under the wrong area codes. This site now holds the published SEND and social care figures for every council, so Blackpool is compared with all of them: it is near the top on social care spend, and its SEND growth is mid-table. The crime row is removed, because this site does not set recorded crime beside asylum support; UK Demographics publishes crime in its own context.
Recomputed on published data: Manchester, Liverpool and Middlesbrough carry the highest combined pressure
This page was headlined "Recomputed: Blackburn, Blackpool and Pendle carry the highest combined pressure", on five domains. Three of them, police recorded crime, adult social care spend and SEND growth, came from 25-authority files typed into this site's source by hand in April 2026, with no raw file or script behind them, and they could not be traced to ONS, NHS Digital or DfE tables. Those files gave adult social care and SEND figures for district councils, which run neither service, and filed Preston, Staffordshire and Worcestershire under the wrong area codes. The table this page printed, Blackburn with Darwen 83.4, Blackpool 79.9, Pendle 78.9, Doncaster 76.6, Burnley 75.7, Hyndburn 75.1 and Preston 75.0, ranked only those 25 areas and is withdrawn, with its crime column. Police recorded crime is no longer a domain. This site does not set recorded crime beside asylum support; UK Demographics publishes crime in its own context. The four remaining domains keep equal weights, a quarter each instead of a fifth. SEND and adult social care now come from the published DfE 2025/26 and DHSC 2024-25 tables, for every council. Recomputed across the 285 English authorities that hold all four domains, Manchester is first on 87.3, Liverpool second on 85.9 and Middlesbrough third on 83.6. Of the seven councils this page named, Pendle is fourth, Blackburn with Darwen fifth, Burnley sixth, Preston tenth, Hyndburn sixteenth, Blackpool forty-sixth and Doncaster sixty-sixth.
Pupils with an EHC plan rose 65% in five years in England, with no link to demographic change
The figures in this piece came from a 25-authority file typed into this site's source by hand in April 2026, with no raw file or script behind it, and they could not be traced to DfE's tables. The file gave EHC plan figures for district councils, which do not run SEND services. The piece said EHC plans grew by an average of 42% over five years, and gave Blackpool +51.2%, Preston +46.8% and North Northamptonshire +45.1%, with Doncaster +45% in the summary. It also gave recorded crime rates of 142.8 per 1,000 for Blackpool and 118.4 for Preston, and described these as areas with high asylum dispersal without giving any figure for it. On DfE's figures (Special educational needs in England, academic year 2025/26, published 11 June 2026, pupils with an EHC plan in all schools), pupils with an EHC plan in England rose by 65.4% in five years, from 325,618 in 2020/21 to 538,547 in 2025/26. Blackpool rose by 70.0%, Lancashire, which runs SEND for Preston, by 75.2%, and Doncaster by 59.4%. North Northamptonshire has no 2020/21 figure because it was created in April 2021. Police recorded crime excluding fraud in the year ending March 2026 was 146.5 per 1,000 residents in Blackpool and 97.7 in Preston (ONS, Crime in England and Wales: Police Force Area data tables, year ending March 2026, Table C2, on ONS mid-2025 population estimates). The crime rates have no bearing on SEND and are removed, as is the unsupported asylum description. The original headline does not hold on the published figures. Across the 123 unitary, metropolitan and London authorities with both figures, five-year growth in pupils with an EHC plan has no relationship with the change in the White British share between the 2011 and 2021 Censuses: the rank correlation is -0.04. The headline originally read: "EHCP demand grew fastest in areas with rapid demographic change". It now says what the published figures show.
What is really driving ethnic change: national trend, not local migration
This piece originally gave the national effect as -6.4pp and said the decomposition covered 305 local authorities. The -6.4pp was not computed from the Census for 2011: every 2011 population total in the data was zero, because the script that read the 2011 Census table did not recognise its "All usual residents" row, so the calculation fell back to a typed 80%. It also did not match the national fall this piece quoted, 80.5% to 74.4%, which is 6.1 points. The data has held 307 decomposed areas throughout. With the real totals, the national effect is -6.2pp: across the 307 authorities whose boundaries allow a 2011 to 2021 comparison, the White British share fell from 79.7% to 73.5% (Census 2011 KS201EW and Census 2021 TS021). Burnley's split is now 81% national trend, 6% age structure and 13% local, against 84%, 5% and 11% before. The piece also named Tower Hamlets and Newham as areas where local migration dominates; in this decomposition both are led by the national trend, before and after the correction.
What asylum costs: £229 per income taxpayer a year, in a range of £208 to £251
This was headlined "What asylum costs: £234 per income taxpayer a year, in a range of £212 to £257", on a central total of £8.0 billion (£7,973M; range £7,225M to £8,773M). That total included a criminal justice line of £152M (range £127M to £203M): a share of foreign national offender prison costs, attributed to the asylum system from nationality overlap. It is removed, because attributing offending by nationality is a link the data cannot support and this site does not publish. Without it the central total is £7.8 billion (£7,821M; range £7,098M to £8,570M), and the cost per income taxpayer is £229, in a range of £208 to £251, not £234 in a range of £212 to £257. The audited share rises from 55% to 56%, the audited or attributed share from 63% to 64%, and the average-attributed part of the total falls from £1,014M to £862M. The calculation now has 14 categories, not 15. Every other line is unchanged.
What asylum costs: £229 per income taxpayer a year, in a range of £208 to £251
A section headed "Foreign National Offenders: the data that exists" is withdrawn. It set the prison population by nationality against the nationalities most common among people claiming asylum, and cited research on asylum dispersal and crime. That implied a link between nationality and crime which the data cannot support: prison statistics by nationality say nothing about whether anyone claimed asylum, and this site does not publish claims of that kind. A sentence in the criminal justice cost line above, which named nationalities in the same way, is removed for the same reason. No cost figure on this page changes.
Correction: crime removed from place pages and the pressure index; SEND and adult social care from published tables
Place pages showed police recorded crime, SEND and adult social care figures for 25 areas, and a pressure index built on them, from files added by hand in April 2026 with no raw file or script. They matched no published table, gave SEND and social care figures for district councils, which run neither service, and filed Preston, Staffordshire and Worcestershire under the wrong area codes: Blackpool showed 142.8 crimes per 1,000, £724 social care spend per head and 51.2% EHC plan growth. The crime section is removed, and police recorded crime is no longer a domain of the pressure index, because this site does not set recorded crime beside asylum support; UK Demographics publishes crime in its own context. The SEND and social care sections now read the published figures for every council, copied from UK Demographics at a recorded commit: DfE pupils with an EHC plan for 2025/26, with five-year growth from 2020/21 (Blackpool +70.0%), and DHSC adult social care gross spend per resident aged 18 and over for 2024-25 (Blackpool £884). A two-tier district shows its county's figures, labelled. The quality of life score and delayed transfer days the pages showed had no published source and are gone. The pressure index is recomputed on its four remaining domains, asylum support, demographic change, SEND growth and adult social care spend, which keep equal weights, a quarter each instead of a fifth. The findings built on the old figures carry dated corrections.
Correction: the 2011 White British share on the homepage
The homepage gave the White British share of England and Wales at the 2011 Census as 80.2%. It summed the 2011 figures of the local authority records this site holds, and for the eleven authorities created after 2011, which have no 2011 record, that sum used their 2021 Census instead. Census 2011 table KS201EW gives 45,134,686 White British residents of 56,075,912 in England and Wales, 80.5%, which is the figure the homepage now shows, read from the England and Wales totals of the same Census extract the site's area figures come from. The 2021 figure, 74.4%, does not change.
Correction: December 2022 figures for 29 places, and broken place links
The quarterly trend on 29 place pages showed wrong figures for 31 December 2022. The largest errors were Kingston upon Hull, shown as 4,777 where the Home Office gives 942; Aberdeen City, 486 against 107; and York, 40 against 357. The other 26 were in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The series is built from the North West Regional Strategic Migration Partnership's workbooks, which republish the Home Office table, and these figures came from an earlier edition; we have not established whether the error was in that edition or in how this site read it. Every one of the 12,408 points in the series now matches the Home Office's own table (Asy_D11, year ending June 2026), and every refresh now checks the latest quarter against the Home Office table for each authority before it goes live. A failing check had also held the site on its 28 September build until 7 October; it now carries the figures to 30 June 2026. Separately, the eight "Top areas" cards on /places/ and some place links on supplier pages pointed at addresses that did not exist, and are fixed. The table behind every place page can now be downloaded as a CSV from /places/.
What asylum costs: £229 per income taxpayer a year, in a range of £208 to £251
This was headlined "The true cost of asylum" and is not that. The central figure sits in a defensible range £1.6 billion wide, and 8% of the total is attributed from an audited total rather than measured directly, so what the piece produces is a comprehensive central estimate and the headline claimed a settled number. "True" also invited the counterfactual reading the article itself rejects further down: this is what the system costs divided by taxpayers, not a sum that would be saved. The headline now carries the range. No figure has changed, and the URL is unchanged so existing links still work.
Correction: the homepage grant rate
The homepage card headed "Initial grant rate" showed 31.5% for the year to June 2026. The Home Office's own figure for that year is 38%. The card divided grants by every initial decision, including withdrawals and administrative outcomes, and counted dependants; the Home Office measure counts main applicants only and divides grants by grants plus refusals. The site now computes the rate on the Home Office's basis from the same Asy_D02 table, which reproduces both its published 38% for the year ending June 2026 and 48% for the year before, and a test holds it to those figures. The card and the new grant rate explainer read one shared calculation.
Birmingham: 43% White British today, projected under 15% by 2051
This piece credited the projection to a fertility gap, Pakistani TFR 2.52 against White British 1.31, and said the true outcome "sits between" the two models. Neither holds. The model does not use total fertility rates: it runs on Census-derived child-woman ratios, which fold fertility, age structure and migration into one observed ratio per cohort, so the TFRs are context from ONS births data and not an input. And two models agreeing does not bracket the truth, because both can share a bias. Here they did: the v8.0 recalibration on an out-of-sample test moved Birmingham's 2051 share from 10.7% to 14.9%, outside the range the earlier text implied. The Census figures, the direction of travel and the 2051 projection stand.
The most deprived fifth of England records 25.5% of births. The least deprived records 15.4%.
This piece was headlined "Women in the most deprived areas have 66% more births. Poverty drives fertility, not just ethnicity," and gave 1.66x as a fertility ratio. It is not one. The figure is 144,522 births against 87,216, and ONS Table 8 publishes no count of women aged 15-44 per decile to divide either number by. A birth count is not a birth rate without the population at risk underneath it, which is the same rule this site applies to asylum support and did not apply here. The gradient is real and the confounding argument survives; the causal headline and the rate claim do not.
Corrections: the privacy policy on analytics, the Birmingham finding on fertility, and a corrections page
The privacy policy said this site uses no analytics and loads no third-party scripts. Both statements were false: every page has carried the Cloudflare Web Analytics beacon, a cookieless script that reports aggregate page views. The policy now says so, names the postcode lookup that sends a typed postcode to postcodes.io, and adds the retention statement it lacked. The footer no longer says no personal data is collected, since the hosts process IP addresses to serve pages; it now says no cookies and no advertising or behavioural tracking. The footer's claim that every number on the site links to its source was wider than the implementation, where sourcing sits at section level and on the sources page, so it now says every headline figure is traceable to its source and methodology. The accessibility statement now names WCAG 2.2 AA as the target and lists the target-size and reflow checks still to do. The Birmingham finding credited its projection to a fertility-rate gap the model does not use, since it runs on Census child-woman ratios, and said the truth sits between two models that had in fact shared a bias; both sentences are corrected on the page. There is now a corrections page, /corrections/, generated from every dated correction in the findings and the diary, so the record is in one place and cannot drift from the pieces that carry it. Ten duplicate redirect entries that Astro warned would become a hard error are reduced to one per path. Raised by the same external audit as the entry below, which missed the analytics beacon; found while checking its privacy findings.
Corrections from an external audit: the 2051 count and chart, the audited share, the crossing years, and a birth count read as a rate
An external audit of the live site found three defects and all three are fixed here. /national/ published 93 local authorities below a 50% White British share by 2051 where the homepage and the finding said 86: that page kept its own inline filter from April and was missed by the commit that carried the v8.0 recalibration through every other surface, so it counted Sheffield under both its retired and its current code and counted the six London boroughs whose projection the plausibility guard withholds. It now reads the shared helper, and the test that checks the count on each page now checks every page that prints it rather than three of them. The true cost article described the audited portion of the £7,973M central estimate as "about 60%"; its own table puts £4,363M on an audited basis, which is 55%, and audited plus attributed is 63%. Both figures are now stated, derived from the cost categories and asserted against them. Threshold years for the Lancashire towns shipped as bare years and now carry a sensitivity band from the model's measured out-of-sample error: Blackburn 2026 to 2028, Pendle 2033 to 2035, Preston 2035 to 2039, Burnley 2048 to 2053. The homepage hotel headline now names the year it covers, because a 2024/25 average sat undated above figures from the latest quarter. Two further defects were found while fixing those. The national ethnic trajectory chart on /national/ aggregated the projection file itself rather than reading the shared helper, so it counted Sheffield and Barnsley under both their retired and current codes and plotted 74.5% for 2021 against the 74.4% published elsewhere; it now derives every series from one place, and that page no longer imports the projection file at all. Separately, the deprivation fertility finding was headlined "Women in the most deprived areas have 66% more births" and gave 1.66x as a fertility ratio. It is a ratio of birth counts: ONS Table 8 publishes births by IMD decile and no count of women aged 15-44 to divide by, and deprived deciles have younger age structures, so an unknown part of the gradient is age composition rather than fertility. The same rule this site applies to asylum support, that a count is not a rate without the population at risk underneath it, was not applied to its own demographic data. The causal headline is withdrawn and the confounding argument, which the data does support, is kept.
Blackpool's pressure is adult social care, not asylum or SEND growth
This page previously said Blackpool was worst or near-worst on every domain, and gave its asylum figure as 577 people at 40.0 per 10,000. That was the position at 31 December 2025. At 30 June 2026 Blackpool has 236 people on asylum support at 16.5 per 10,000. Blackpool's own place page was already showing the newer figure while this page showed the older one.
Academic ethnic projections over-predicted White British share in 95% of areas
This article previously reported NEWETHPOP's error as 2.58pp and our own as 1.71pp, a 33 per cent improvement. Both figures are withdrawn. The 2.58pp had no backing in our published validation data, which records NEWETHPOP at 3.95pp across 296 areas, four paragraphs above where the 2.58pp appeared. The 1.71pp came from a backcast that fitted its ratios on the same two Censuses it was then tested against, so it measured the model's own guardrails rather than its accuracy, and it had the direction of the bias backwards. The claim to be the most accurate model publicly available is withdrawn with it. The head-to-head above is the replacement, on out-of-sample figures for both models. Full limitations are documented on our methodology page, and only a one-decade horizon has been validated.
Model v8.0: recalibrated on an out-of-sample test, and the counts that follow from it
The projection model was re-fitted and tested by fitting cohort change ratios on Census 2001 to 2011, forecasting 2021, and scoring against the actual Census 2021, so the fitting window never touches the target. On the White British share it scores mean absolute error 1.56pp with a bias of +0.05pp across 285 areas. The settings it replaces scored 2.82pp with a bias of -2.13pp on the same test, meaning the previous model projected change too fast rather than too slow. Shrinkage toward the national ratio is K=25 and the growth ceiling is 1.65 per decade, both chosen on that test. Counts move with it: 86 local authorities are projected below a 50% White British share by 2051 rather than 109, 59 of them currently majority, and Birmingham's 2051 share is 14.9% rather than 10.7%. The backcast comparison with NEWETHPOP is withdrawn; the defensible comparison is out-of-sample against out-of-sample, this model at 1.56pp across 285 areas against NEWETHPOP at 3.95pp across 296. Only a one-decade horizon has been tested.
Estate design system, five claim corrections, and a data refresh that had been failing since July
The site moved onto the shared visual system used across the network. Five published claims were corrected: the 190,809 safe-and-legal humanitarian grants for year ending March 2026 are 77 per cent in-country extensions rather than arrivals, and out-of-country grants fell from 58,459 to 43,620; the 107,003 people in supported accommodation was the 31 December 2025 quarter end, not the current 97,519 at 31 March 2026, and it had been understating every area's share by about 9 per cent; and the claim that 70 nationalities see grant rates rise after appeal was never right, the figure being 101 of 105. Separately, the scheduled data refresh had failed on every run since at least 13 July, across five distinct faults, and now runs Monday and Thursday and deploys what it commits.
Asylum grant rates rise sharply on appeal, across 101 nationalities
Two figures in this article were wrong and one that looked wrong was not. The count was wrong. This article said 70 nationalities; the correct figure is 101 rising out of 105 tracked, on the method set out above. The initial grant rate column was wrong and could not be reproduced from Asy_D04. It read 31.0 percent for Sri Lanka against 26.9 percent, 37.7 percent for Iraq against 30.9 percent, and 37.7 percent for Vietnam against 49.0 percent, an error in the opposite direction, so it was not one systematic slip. The "after appeals" column was correct on every row and is unchanged. Both columns are now computed the same way from the same dataset, and the uplift column is their difference rather than a separately carried figure.
86 local authorities projected minority White British by 2051
This piece originally said 109 areas and cited the model's backcast score as validation. Both were wrong. The backcast fitted its ratios on the same two Censuses it was tested against, so it measured the model's own guardrails rather than its accuracy, and those guardrails were letting projections compound into arithmetic rather than demography. The model has since been recalibrated against a genuine out-of-sample test that fits on Census 2001 to 2011 and forecasts 2021, scored on the actual Census 2021. That test showed the old settings were projecting change too fast, not too slow as previously stated here. On the recalibrated model the count is 86, and the currently-majority subset is 59, not 76. See the methodology for the test and the numbers.
How corrections work here
A correction is added to the top of the piece it concerns, dated, with the original claim quoted so the change can be judged. Withdrawn figures are named rather than deleted, and a test blocks each withdrawn figure from returning. The release diary records what changed and when, and the methodology carries the reasoning behind every model change. To report an error: info@asylumstats.co.uk.