THE Wiltshire population increased by more than 8 per cent in a decade, exceeding 500,000 people, new figures show.

This is higher than the overall increase for England (6.6 per cent) in the same time scale, where the population grew by nearly 3.5 million to 56,489,800.

Census data released today, June 28, by the Office for National Statistics, has recorded population changes in 2011 and 2021, based on location, gender and age.

The statistics show that in 2021 Wiltshire was the county with the 13th largest population change.

The population size increased by 8.4 per cent - from around 471,000 in 2011 to 510,400 in 2021.

This is higher than the increase for the whole of the South West - 7.8 per cent.

There has been an increase of 30.5 per cent in people aged 65 years and over, an increase of 4.2 per cent in people aged 15 to 64 years, and an increase of 0.7 per cent in children aged under 15 years.

Despite the evident population increase, data confirmed that Wiltshire is the 11th least densely populated of the South West's 30 local authority areas, with around one person living on each football pitch-sized area of land.

Get more Salisbury news. 

You can also like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date, as well as signing up for one of our newsletters.

If you want online news with fewer ads, unlimited access and reader rewards - plus a chance to support our local journalism - find out more about registering or a digital subscription.

Email newsdesk@salisburyjournal.co.uk with your comments, pictures, letters and news stories.