The UK today and religion

How many people live in the UK and where

The UK's population has grown enormously over the centuries. Around 1600 it stood at a little over 4 million, and by 1801, the year of the first census, it had reached 8 million. It then roughly doubled to about 20 million by 1851 and doubled again to around 40 million by 1901. The most recent official estimate from the Office for National Statistics put the UK population at 68.3 million in mid-2023, an increase of 1.0% on the year before. This continued growth reflects both migration into the country and people living longer, though the rate of increase has slowed recently as net migration has fallen from its 2023 peak.

The population is spread very unevenly across the four nations. England holds by far the largest share, accounting for roughly eight in every ten people in the UK, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together make up the remainder, with Northern Ireland the smallest of the four. This imbalance matters for the test: England is not simply the biggest part of the UK by land area, it is also home to the overwhelming majority of its people.

The UK's population is ageing. Better living conditions and improvements in healthcare mean people are living longer than in previous generations, and the number of people aged 85 and over has reached a record high. This shift is placing growing pressure on the costs of pensions and health and social care, since a larger share of the population now depends on services that working-age taxpayers fund.

Four nations, their cities and their countryside

The United Kingdom is made up of four nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each has its own capital city: London for England and the UK as a whole, Edinburgh for Scotland, Cardiff for Wales and Belfast for Northern Ireland. Beyond the capitals, each nation has other major cities that a learner should recognise. England's include Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Bradford, Newcastle upon Tyne, Plymouth, Southampton and Norwich. Wales adds Swansea and Newport alongside Cardiff, Scotland includes Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen alongside Edinburgh, and Belfast stands alone as Northern Ireland's principal city.

Geographically, the UK sits in the north-west corner of Europe. The greatest distance across the mainland runs between John O'Groats, on Scotland's north coast, and Land's End, in the far south-west of England, a stretch of about 870 miles, or roughly 1,400 kilometres. Most people in the UK live in towns and cities, but a great deal of the land remains countryside, and walking, camping and fishing in rural areas remain popular pastimes.

Language reflects this mix of nations too. English varies widely in accent and dialect from one region to another, but three other languages have official recognition in parts of the UK. Welsh, a language quite unrelated to English, is widely spoken in Wales and taught in its schools and universities. Gaelic is spoken in parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and Irish Gaelic is spoken by some people in Northern Ireland.

Keeping a pet responsibly

Anyone who owns a pet in the UK has legal duties towards it under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which places a duty of care on keepers and makes it a criminal offence to cause an animal unnecessary suffering. This covers basic needs such as suitable food, water, shelter and the chance to behave normally, and it applies regardless of the type of animal kept.

Dog owners face additional specific rules. Since 6 April 2016, every dog in England, Scotland and Wales over eight weeks old must be fitted with a microchip recording the keeper's contact details, and the same requirement has applied to pet cats over 20 weeks old in England since June 2024. The microchip helps reunite lost or stray animals with their owners and makes keepers accountable if their dog causes harm to a person, property or another animal. An owner who fails to microchip a dog can be given a set period to fix this before facing a fine, though a vet can grant an exemption on health grounds.

Dogs in public places are subject to further controls. Local rules commonly require dogs to be kept on a lead in certain areas, and it is an offence to let a dog become dangerously out of control anywhere, whether in public or private. Councils can also require dog owners to clean up after their pets in public spaces, and failing to do so can lead to a fine.

Veterinary care is another responsibility that comes with pet ownership. Owners are expected to arrange appropriate treatment when an animal is sick or injured, and vets play a central role not only in treating illness but in procedures such as microchipping and issuing health-based exemptions from it. Cruelty towards an animal, including neglect that causes suffering, can lead to prosecution, a fine, disqualification from keeping animals, or a prison sentence, since protecting animal welfare is treated as a serious legal matter rather than simply a moral one.

A nation of many backgrounds and voices

Ask people in the UK about their ethnic background and the most common answer, by a wide margin, remains white, a category that in official surveys includes people descended from European, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and American settlers as well as those native to Britain. Beyond that, the largest groups have Asian, black or mixed heritage, and getting an exact picture of ethnic origin across the whole population is genuinely difficult, since people describe themselves in different ways. London shows this diversity most clearly and is changing faster than almost anywhere else in the country.

Alongside ethnic diversity, the UK carries several living languages beneath its everyday English. English itself varies enormously from place to place, with distinct regional accents and dialects that a learner will hear as soon as they cross from one city to another. This variety in speech goes hand in hand with strong regional identities: people in the UK tend to feel a loyalty not only to their nation, England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but to their city, county or local area, and are often quick to point out what makes their particular corner of the country distinctive.

Nowhere is that local pride more visible than around 1 March, 17 March, 23 April and 30 November, the feast days of Wales's, Northern Ireland's, England's and Scotland's patron saints respectively. Only Scotland and Northern Ireland treat their saint's day as an official public holiday, though even in Scotland some businesses stay open. England and Wales no longer give their saints' days as holidays, but St George's Day and St David's Day are still marked with parades and local festivals, and Scottish and Irish heritage is celebrated well beyond the two nations' own borders wherever communities with that ancestry have settled.

Christianity and the Church of England

Christianity is the largest religion practised in the UK, and its history there stretches back many centuries before the Reformation split western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant traditions. The Church of England, also called the Anglican Church, is the established church, meaning it holds a formal, legal position as the church of the state in England. This goes back to the 1530s, when King Henry VIII broke from the authority of the Pope in Rome and had himself recognised as head of a new national church rather than a subject of the Catholic Church.

The monarch remains central to that arrangement today. Since Elizabeth I's reign the reigning king or queen has held the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and by law, following the Act of Settlement of 1701, the monarch must be a member of that church. In practice the monarch's role is largely ceremonial. Day-to-day leadership of the Church of England falls to its bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury recognised as its most senior clergyman and, beyond England, as a figurehead for the worldwide Anglican Communion of national churches that share its traditions.

The Church of England governs much of its own affairs through its General Synod, a national assembly that considers church legislation, decides on new forms of worship and approves the church's budget. It replaced an earlier body, the Church Assembly, in 1970. Because the Church of England is established, some of its formal decisions, called Measures, still need parliamentary approval before they become part of the law of the land, a reminder that although Parliament and the Church remain legally linked, the Church itself does most of its own governing day to day.

The Church of Scotland and other Christian denominations

Scotland has its own national church, the Church of Scotland, and it works on entirely different lines from the Church of England. Rather than being led by bishops, it follows a Presbyterian structure, meaning it is run by ministers and elders sitting together on a series of church courts. Local congregations are led by a kirk session, kirk sessions answer to regional presbyteries, and the whole church comes together each year in Edinburgh for its General Assembly, the Church of Scotland's supreme governing body. The Assembly elects a moderator to chair its meetings for the year, a role that carries no special powers but makes that person the church's public face for twelve months. Unlike the Church of England, the Church of Scotland is not tied to the state; Parliament recognised it in 1921 as Scotland's national church without making it an established church answerable to the Crown in the way England's church is.

Christianity in the UK reaches well beyond these two national churches. Roman Catholicism, which the Church of England itself broke away from in the sixteenth century, still has millions of followers across the UK, along with Methodist, Baptist and other Protestant denominations that trace their roots to later waves of reform and revival. Orthodox Christianity is practised too, brought by communities with roots in Eastern Europe, Greece and beyond. None of these churches is linked to the state in the way the Church of England or, historically, the Church of Scotland has been; they organise and fund themselves independently and worship freely alongside the UK's established and national churches.

Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism in the UK

Islam is the largest faith in the UK after Christianity. According to the 2021 census for England and Wales, around 3.9 million people, or 6.5% of the population, identified as Muslim, up from 4.9% in 2011. Muslim communities are concentrated in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester, and mosques serve as centres of worship and community life across the country. Many Muslims observe daily prayers, the fast of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj, and Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are widely marked festivals.

Hinduism is the third-largest religion recorded in the census, followed by just over a million people in England and Wales in 2021, or about 1.7% of the population, up from 1.5% a decade earlier. Hindu communities are especially concentrated in London and the South East, with temples known as mandirs found in many cities. Diwali, the festival of light, and Holi, the spring festival of colour, are among the celebrations widely observed by Hindus in the UK and increasingly enjoyed by the wider public.

Sikhism is the fourth-largest religion, with about 520,000 people in England, roughly 0.9% of the population, identifying as Sikh in the 2021 census, and further Sikh communities in Scotland and Wales. Sikh communities are especially strong in the West Midlands and London. Sikh places of worship, called gurdwaras, are open to visitors of any faith and traditionally serve a free communal meal known as langar. Sikhs mark Vaisakhi in April, which commemorates the founding of the Khalsa, the Sikh community of the faithful, in 1699.

Judaism and Buddhism in the UK

Judaism is one of the oldest minority faiths practised in the UK, with a Jewish community present since before the medieval expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and re-established from the seventeenth century onwards. The 2021 census recorded around 269,000 Jewish people in England and Wales, about 0.5% of the population, with significant communities in London and Manchester. Synagogues serve as the centre of Jewish religious and communal life, and Jewish festivals such as Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are observed according to the Hebrew calendar.

Buddhism is practised by a smaller number of people in the UK, around 262,000 in England and Wales at the 2021 census, roughly 0.5% of the population. Buddhist practice in Britain draws on traditions from across Asia and has also attracted converts from other backgrounds, with meditation centres and temples found in many towns and cities. Buddhists follow the teachings of the Buddha and observe practices such as meditation, and some mark Buddha Day, or Wesak, which commemorates the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death.

Living without religion and the right to believe freely

Having no religion is now the second most common response on the census, and it has grown sharply in recent years. In the 2021 census for England and Wales, 37.2% of people said they had no religion, up from 25.2% in 2011, while the proportion identifying as Christian fell below half of the population for the first time, to 46.2%. This shift has been driven especially by younger people, who are far less likely than older generations to identify with any faith.

Whatever a person believes, or does not believe, the law protects their right to hold and practise their views. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is a right guaranteed to everyone in the UK, and people are free to change their religion or belief, or to have none at all. Discrimination against someone because of their religion or belief is unlawful, and this protection sits alongside the same legal guarantee of freedom for people who practise a religion. In everyday life, this means employers, schools and public services must treat people fairly regardless of their faith or lack of one, while individuals remain free to express their beliefs openly, within the ordinary limits of the law.

Where people worship

Every faith practised in the UK has its own kind of building for worship and community life, and most towns of any size have more than one type standing within a short walk of each other. Christians worship in churches, chapels or cathedrals, which range from small parish churches to the great cathedrals of cities such as Canterbury and Coventry. Muslims worship in mosques, and larger cities have several, often serving different local communities. Hindus worship in a temple called a mandir, home to statues of gods and goddesses that are treated with great care and decorated for festivals. Sikhs worship in a gurdwara, literally meaning the doorway to the Guru, where the Guru Granth Sahib, Sikhism's holy scripture, is kept and read. Jewish communities worship in a synagogue, led in prayer by a rabbi.

Visitors of any faith or none are generally welcome to look around a place of worship, though each has its own customs. Shoes are removed before entering a mosque, a Hindu mandir or a gurdwara, and head coverings are often expected too: a skullcap for men in a synagogue, a headscarf for women in a mosque, and a covering for anyone entering a gurdwara. Sikh gurdwaras keep up the tradition of langar, a free vegetarian meal cooked and served by volunteers to anyone who visits, regardless of their beliefs. Many mosques, temples and gurdwaras also run classes, host festivals and provide a base for social and charitable work within their communities.

Some of these buildings began life as something else entirely. A number of mosques, gurdwaras and churches around the country have been created inside former cinemas and other older buildings rather than purpose-built structures, a sign of how quickly and practically new congregations have taken root as the population's religious make-up has changed.