On Census day in 2011 there were 56.1m people living in England and Wales, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). That’s a 7% increase compared with a decade ago.
This means that there has been an increase of around 20m in 100years.
Northern Ireland increased by nearly 102,000 and the figures for Scotland are to be published later this year.
Worldometers, which minute-by-minute ticks up the overall increase in world population, reckons that the current total is over 7bn. 
Far more people are born each day than die and in the UK we have a rising population of over 65s with more reaching 100 years old than ever before.
At rate earth’s population is growing it could be 9bn by 2020 and after that nobody knows what the increase might be.
The highly respected 92-year old scientist and environmentalist, Professor James Lovelock, has said: “A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.”
He predicted in 2006 that by this century’s end “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
In the meantime, however, national statistician at ONS, Jil Matheson, says: “Around 55% of the increase in population in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011 was the result of net migration. Around 45% of the increase resulted from the number of births exceeding the number of deaths, caused partly by the number of women of child bearing age increasing and partly by people living longer.”
The largest increase in population since 2001 was in London, which gained more than 850,000 residents (12 per cent) and now has a population of over 8 million.
From the Green Deal/home improvement point of view, there were 23.4m households in England and Wales, an 8% increase on the 21.7m households in 2001. The average household size was 2.4 people, unchanged from 2001.
Also around 55% of the population increase between 2001 and 2011 was the result of the result of net migration.
The census also found that the average population density is 371 people per square kilometre, which equates to about four people on a rugby pitch and 331 of the 348 local authority areas grew between 2001 and 2011, with 17 decreasing in population.
More information: www.ons.gov.uk/census