What was claimed
Last year 695,000 Brits left the UK.
Our verdict
False. This figure is an estimate of the total number of people who emigrated in the year ending June 2025, 252,000 of whom were British nationals.
Around 250,000 Brits emigrated last year, not 695,000
What was claimed
We welcomed around 900,000 newcomers from overseas, including 110,000 asylum seekers.
Our verdict
This isn’t quite right. While estimated immigration was around 900,000 in the year to June 2025, only 96,000 are estimated to have arrived as asylum seekers. The 110,000 figure likely refers to the number of people who claimed asylum in the UK, not all of whom actually arrived in the country during this period.
A post on Facebook claims that “695,000 Brits left the UK” last year, and that “in their place we welcomed around 900,000 newcomers from overseas, including 110,000 asylum seekers.”
This isn’t correct. The 695,000 figure is close to the total number of people provisionally estimated to have emigrated from the UK in the year ending June 2025, but most of these people weren’t British nationals.
According to the latest Office for National Statistics estimates, of the 693,000 people who emigrated in this period, 252,000 were British nationals.
It is true that 898,000 people are estimated to have migrated to the UK over the same 12 months, but it’s worth noting that this figure also includes 143,000 British nationals.
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Of these 898,000 people, 96,000 are estimated to have migrated to the UK to claim asylum. Separate government figures put the number of people who claimed asylum in the year ending June 2025 at 111,084, which may be what the 110,000 figure in the Facebook post refers to. However, this figure also includes people who had already been in the UK for some time before making their asylum claim, not just people who migrated to the UK to claim asylum during this period.
In recent weeks we’ve seen a number of claims circulating about the number of British people leaving the UK, many of which aren’t supported by the available statistics. We’ve written more about this topic here.
Our migration explainer also has more details on the number of people migrating to and from the UK.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the 695,000 figure refers to the total number of people estimated to have emigrated in the year to June 2025, most of whom weren’t British nationals.