Christians now account for less than half of the population in England and Wales for the first time in census history, according to official figures released by the UK government.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) results show that 46.2 per cent of the population (27.5 million people) described themselves as ‘Christian’ in 2021. This marks a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3 per cent (33.3 million people) in 2011.

The census data also show that every major religion increased over the ten-year period, except for Christianity.

However, despite the decline, ‘Christian’ remained the highest response to the question about religion. ‘No religion’ was the second highest response, increasing to 37.2 per cent (22.2 million) from 25.2 per cent (14.1 million) across the ten-year period.

The Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, said it was “not a great surprise” that there is a declining number of Christians in the UK, but it was important to remember that Christianity is “the largest movement on Earth”.

But Humanists UK said the Census “should be a wake-up call which prompts fresh reconsiderations of the role of religion in society”.

The census also shows that in 2021, 81.7 per cent (48.7 million) of usual residents in England and Wales identified their ethnic group within the ‘White’ category – a decrease from 86.0 per cent (48.2 million) in the 2011 Census.

The next most common ethnic group was ‘Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh’, accounting for 9.3 per cent (5.5 million) of the overall population. This ethnic group saw the largest increase from 2011, up from 7.5 per cent (4.2 million people).

Researchers also found that the most common main languages other than English were: Polish (1.1 per cent, 612,000), Romanian (0.8 per cent, 472,000), Panjabi (0.5 per cent, 291,000), and Urdu (0.5 per cent, 270,000).