Poland has overtaken India as the most common non-UK country of birth for people living in the UK, Office for National Statistics figures show.

It comes as net migration estimates show it remains near record levels, at 327,000 for the year to March.

The figures – for the period before Britain voted to leave the EU – are down slightly on record levels.

Net migration is the difference between the number of people coming to the UK for at least a year and those leaving.

There was a dip in the numbers settling in the UK from Poland and seven other former Eastern bloc countries in the year to March but that was offset by an increase in net migration from Bulgaria and Romania, which hit record levels of 60,000, according to the latest estimates.

‘Significant increases’

Nicola White, ONS Head of International Migration Statistics, said: “Net migration remains at record levels although the recent trend is broadly flat.

“The influx of Romanians and Bulgarians has also reached a new high, although that’s off-set by falls in non-EU immigration and from other central and eastern European countries.

“Work remains the main reason for migration, followed by study which has seen a significant fall in the number of people coming to the UK for education.

“It’s important to remember that these figures only go up to the end of March and do not cover the period following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.”

She said the UK’s population continued to increase between 2014 and 2015, driven by “significant increases in both the non-UK born and non-British national population of the UK”.

She added: “Poland is now the most common non-UK country of birth, overtaking India for the first time.

“The number of Polish born citizens living in the UK has continued to increase since Poland joined the EU and the number of UK residents born in Poland was eight times higher in 2015 compared with 2004.”

ONS estimates show 13.3% of the usually resident population of the UK were born abroad, compared with 8.9% in 2004.

In 2015, there were an estimated 831,000 residents who had been born in Poland, 9.7% of the non-UK born population, compared with 795,000 from India.

The region with the highest proportion of non-UK born residents, at 37%, is London.

Work permits

More than 25% of births in England and Wales in 2015 were to women born outside the UK, the highest level on record, according to separate figures.

ONS statistician Elizabeth McLaren said: “The rising percentage of births to women born outside the UK is largely due to foreign born women making up an increasing share of the female population of childbearing age in England and Wales.

“Part of the reason for this is that migrants are more likely to be working-age adults rather than children or older people. Alongside their increasing share of the population, higher fertility among women born outside the UK has also had an impact.”

The figures come as Sir David Metcalf, the government’s chief adviser on immigration controls, suggested Prime Minister Theresa May is considering introducing work permits for low skilled migrants from the EU.

Sir David, head of the Migration Advisory Committee, told the Telegraph the scheme would be “pretty straightforward” to run and could be based on a previous work permit system for seasonal agricultural workers.

He said: “The agricultural scheme was terrifically well administered, it was one guy at the Home Office working with operators and farmers.

“It was time limited and capped. We could think of similar sectors where you have got a lot of unskilled European labour. That’s very much tied up with what the prime minster is interested in.”

Mrs May came under fire when she was home secretary for failing to meet the government’s target of getting annual net migration below 100,000.

She has said that reducing net migration will be her “absolute priority” in Brexit negotiations.

A report by think tank British Future, released ahead of the latest figures, said the vote to leave the EU was a chance to fix the UK’s “broken” immigration system and restore trust in controlled migration.