Modelled Estimates of Recent Births for English Local Authorities

England's modelled annual live birth estimates for local authority districts, regions, and ITL2 areas. The Greater London Authority Demography team produces these estimates using GP registration counts to provide more timely data than official ONS figures, which have a 9-12 month publication lag. The dataset includes official ONS estimates from July 1992 to January 2025, interpolated monthly figures, and predicted births up to October 2025 with 95% prediction intervals.

Use Cases

• Forecasting local population changes based on predicted annual births.
• Analyzing regional birth trends over time using interpolated and actual data.
• Comparing modelled birth estimates with official ONS figures to assess prediction accuracy.
• Planning public service provision for infant and maternal health based on geospatial birth estimates.

Strengths

• Estimates are produced monthly with a latency of 1-2 weeks, offering timeliness over official data.
• Covers multiple geographic levels in England, including local authority districts and regions.
• Includes 95% prediction intervals for modelled estimates, providing uncertainty quantification.
• Methodology and code are publicly available on GitHub for transparency.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data are not currently split by sex, limiting gender-based analysis.

Provenance

Source

Greater London Authority Demography team, using NHS Digital patient count data and ONS official estimates.

Collection Method

Modelled estimates generated via correlation between GP-registered infants aged 0 and resident births over the preceding year.

Time Range

Official estimates from July 1992 to January 2025, with predictions up to October 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-24 21:01:32.424734

Geography

Local authority districts, regions, country, and ITL2 levels in England.