Rise in births recorded in Luton last year

It comes days after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called on Britons to consider having more children and having them sooner, warning of the "worrying repercussions" posed by a decline in fertility rates.

Office for National Statistics figures show live births in England rose 0.7% – the first increase since 2021. There were 567,708 live births registered last year, up from 563,561 in 2023.

Similar to the national trend, live births in Luton increased 4.8%, from 3,464 in 2023 to 3,632 last year.

While births slightly increased in England, they continued to decline in Wales. Last year, the country recorded 26,832 live births – down 2% from 2023.

And in Central Bedfordshire, live births fell 5.1%, from 3,581 in 2023 to 3,398 last year.

Greg Ceely, ONS head of population health monitoring, said: "...the number of births to mothers under 30 fell, as people continue to put off having children until later in life.

"The largest decrease is seen amongst those under 20 years old, which fell by almost 5%, while the number of mothers aged 35-39 grew the most.

In Luton, 2,561 (70.5%) births were registered within marriage or civil partnership and this figure was 1,822 (53.6%) births for Central Bedfordshire.

The ONS figures come after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called for Britons to have more children sooner, warning of the "worrying repercussions" of declining fertility rates.

She told The Daily Telegraph: "A generation of young people have been thinking twice about starting a family, worried not only about rising mortgage and rent repayments, wary not only of the price of fuel and food but also put off by a childcare system simultaneously lacking in places and ruinously expensive."

Across England and Wales, some 39.5% of live births had either one or both parents born outside the UK, up from 37.3% in 2023 and 32.5% a decade earlier in 2014.

In Luton, 2,867 (78.9%) births had either one or both parents born outside the UK. And in Central Bedfordshire, 1,012 (29.8%) births had either one or both parents born outside the UK.