Romanian is the fastest-growing language in England and Wales, census data has revealed. When the 2011 census was taken, just 67,586 people had Romanian as their first language. By 2021, that figure had swelled to 471,954.
That means the number of Romanian speakers in England and Wales has gone up by over 400,000 in ten years, equivalent to a seven-fold increase. Romanian is now the second most-common foreign language spoken in the country. Ten years ago it was only ranked 19th.
Romania joined the European Union in 2007, before the 2011 census, meaning Romanians could enjoy restriction-free travel and residency in any EU member state, including the UK. Work permit restrictions were then lifted on the last day of 2013, which gave Romanians the same access to the UK labour market as other EU citizens.
Since Brexit, however, Romanians can no longer settle in the UK without applying for a visa or residency scheme. London has the highest proportion of Romanian speakers (1.9%). The London borough of Harrow has the highest concentration, with around one in 13 people (7.5%) speaking Romanian as their first language.
Only one language has seen a higher proportional increase than Romanian - Caribbean Creole. But there were only 101 speakers in 2011, now there are 1,633. There has also been a 189% rise in Bulgarian speakers, with Bulgaria joining the EU at the same time as Romania.
The number of Ukrainian speakers also more than doubled from 6,578 in 2011 to 14,088 in 2021 - and that was before the Russian invasion which has seen many war refugees come to the UK. Meanwhile, the number of Gaelic speakers has almost trebled, to 169 - but only 58 people declared Scottish as their first language in 2011.
Polish remains the most common language among those who do not consider English their first language. In 2021 there were 611,845 native Polish speakers (1.1% of the population) an increase of 12% since 2011.
After Romanian, that is followed by Panjabi (290,745 speakers), Urdu (269,849), Portuguese (224,719), and Spanish (215,062). The latest figures show that in 2021, 91.1% of the population of England and Wales had English (or Welsh) as their first language. That has fallen from 92.3% when the census was taken in 2011.
