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Net migration to the UK has dropped to its lowest point in over a decade, yet many people still believe the numbers are rising.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK net migration fell sharply by 80% between 2023 and 2025.

Deputy Director of Migration Statistics, Sarah Crofts writes on ONS blog: “Our provisional estimates show that in the year ending (YE) December 2025 overall net migration stood at 171,000 – down from 331,000 a year earlier. A fall in non-EU immigration is the main driver of this.  

Overall, non-EU net migration has fallen by two-thirds since it peaked in 2023.”

However, despite the dramatic decline, a new report from the think tank British Future, After The Fall, found that nearly half the public still thinks migration went up last year.

The 2026 Immigration Attitudes Tracker report states:

“Net migration peaked at 900,000 in 2023. But the numbers fell sharply from 649,000 in 2024 to 204,000 for the twelve months to June 2025.

“Yet the 2026 tracker survey finds that this significant fall has simply not registered with the vast majority of the public. Only one in six people (16%) thinks net migration was lower in 2025 than in 2024. One in five suspects it was about the same. Yet half the public (49%) think net migration rose again.”

The survey included 3,003 adults from across Great Britain and was carried out between March 19 and March 30 this year.

During British Future’s webinar, Policy, Politics and Public Attitudes, the group’s director, Sunder Katwala, said that people’s views on immigration are now shaped more by what they think than by the actual numbers.

He said: “One of the reasons why immigration policy is difficult is that it is about facts, whereas the politics is about people’s perception. And the work that British Future is doing is looking at where those perceptions are.”

Mr Katwala added, “Currently, there is very little talk about how much immigration has decreased, and instead, the public only really sees a political and media focus on the risks and how it needs stricter control. In that context, it’s easy to see why we think immigration is still running at record levels.”

Researchers found that people thought asylum seekers made up about 33% of UK immigration, but the real number from the ONS is closer to 9%. So, the public’s guess was more than three times too high.

Meanwhile, official data show international students accounted for 52% of UK immigration flows, but respondents on average believed students made up just 24%. This means the public underestimates the proportion of international students among migrants. 

The report also found 55% of people still want immigration reduced overall, although most respondents did not support cuts to work or student visas. 

Researchers warned that the gap between public perception and official statistics risked undermining informed democratic debate.

The report states: “Much of our political and media debate about immigration is not about the people arriving on work or study visas that make up most of the immigration to the UK each year. It is about asylum and people arriving on small boats, even though this makes up a much smaller share of the overall numbers.”

Writing for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Editor Gareth Davies reflected on these findings.

He said: “Hostile political rhetoric and harmful media coverage overshadows statistics that show migration is falling.”

Political commentator Ian Dunt also posted on BlueSky his response to the British Future’s findings: “If journalists were doing their job properly, it would simply not be possible for the public to be labouring under this degree of ignorance.”

British Future’s report concluded that Britain’s immigration debate had become increasingly disconnected from reality, warning that public attitudes may continue to be shaped more by political messaging and media framing than by official data.