16 measures that add up across councils

Where is a change concentrated?

A national movement is not spread evenly. For measures whose council figures are parts of a whole — counts of people, amounts of money — these pages show how much of one year’s movement happened in how few councils, and which ones.

The measure of concentration here is a share of the gross movement: every council’s change taken as a size, rises and falls both counted, and added up. That is deliberate. If one council rose by 10,000 and another fell by 10,000, the country’s total did not move, but a great deal happened, and a share of the net change would hide it.

Measure	Councils compared	Half the movement is in	Share in the top ten	Sum of the changes	Period
Unallocated council reservesMHCLG	293	14 councils	45.2%	+351£351.1m either way	Year ending March 2025on a year earlier
Other population change by local authorityONS	361	25 councils	33.6%	−1,4731,473 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Outstanding council borrowingMHCLG	361	33 councils	23.4%	+6,144£6.1bn either way	2026 Q2on a year earlier
Asylum seekers supported in each council areaHome Office	336	36 councils	23.7%	−12,83012,830 either way	2026 Q2on a year earlier
International migration into a local authorityONS	361	36 councils	22.2%	−342,234342,234 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Council spending on servicesMHCLG	293	38 councils	19.2%	+5,541£5.5bn either way	Year ending March 2025on a year earlier
Earmarked council reservesMHCLG	293	39 councils	20.5%	−398£398.3m either way	Year ending March 2025on a year earlier
Council investments heldMHCLG	361	43 councils	23.0%	−1,509£1.5bn either way	2026 Q2on a year earlier
Net international migration by local authorityONS	361	46 councils	18.7%	−500,947500,947 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Net internal migration by local authorityONS	361	61 councils	15.0%	+7,3647,364 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
People claiming unemployment-related benefitsONS	361	62 councils	15.4%	+22,39022,390 either way	July 2026on a year earlier
International migration out of a local authorityONS	361	69 councils	13.2%	+158,783158,783 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Population by local authorityONS	361	72 councils	12.1%	+755,254755,254 either way	Mid-2024on a year earlier
Births by local authorityONS	361	74 councils	12.4%	−7,9427,942 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Births minus deaths by local authorityONS	361	75 councils	12.8%	−7,4177,417 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier
Deaths by local authorityONS	361	81 councils	11.4%	−525525 either way	Year to mid-2024on a year earlier

Which measures are here, and which are not

A measure qualifies when adding its councils together produces a quantity somebody publishes: a number of claimants, an amount borrowed, a count of births. Prices, rents, rates, medians and averages do not qualify — the councils cannot be added, so no council can hold a share of the total. 11 of the local measures on the site are left out for that reason, or because fewer than 100 councils have a comparable pair of figures.

A concentrated movement is a description of where figures moved, and no more than that. Population, money and claimants sit where people live, so a large council usually contributes more of any total than a small one. These pages give the shares; what a reader should make of them is not stated here.