Poles are still leaving the islands. This does not mean that London has become deserted.

In the year to June 2025, approximately 7,000 Polish citizens came to live in the UK permanently. About 25,000 went the other way. Balance: minus 18-19 thousand.

This is not an internet rumor. Such estimates are provided by the British statistical office ONS. Poles were the second largest group from the EU, after Romanians, to leave the UK during this period. From June 2020 to June 2025, net migration alone reduced this community by approximately 70,000.

This ends the part with defensible numbers. The rest depends on who counts.

The Central Statistical Office in Warsaw counts temporary emigration as: staying abroad for at least 12 months. At the end of 2025, there are approximately 412,000 in the UK. The 2021 British census counted people born in Poland in England and Wales: 743,000. In addition, there are children born here, people with British passports and those who have not been "temporarily" for decades. That's why one headline says 400,000, another says 700. Both numbers may be true. They count on something else.

The peak was around 2016–2017, when there were around one million Poles in the UK. Then a referendum, a pandemic, more expensive life, more difficult entry for newcomers. The direction has reversed. Not overnight and not "to zero".

Why some people come back is less spectacular than it is being sold. Rent in London eats up the salary, which in 2012 was enough for everything. In Poland, it is already possible to earn money in a profession that here means weekends and a bus. Parents in the country are older. Someone has lost their job, someone doesn't feel safe in the neighborhood, someone has simply finished their plan: save up, buy a plot, come back. Brexit is the background, not the only reason. Inflation and queues to the doctor too.

There remains the other side, which is almost invisible in these statistics. In Ealing, Greenford, Northolt and Southall, the Polish store, Polish mass and Saturday school did not disappear, because 25,000 people left the country. It is still one of the densest Polish districts in Western Europe. Anyone who has lived here for 12-15 years, has settled status, has children at a local school and has a loan or lease agreement - is not a "temporary emigration" item in the Central Statistical Office table.

If someone really weighs their bags, the ONS numbers will tell them nothing about their case. Settled status expires after five years of continuous absence, not two (two years is normal non-EUSS ILR). Benefits, GHIC, S1 and duty-free furniture transport are arranged before departure, not after landing in Modlin. If someone stays, they stay in a city that is more expensive and crowded than a decade ago, but there is still work, school and neighbors with whom you can talk in Polish.

Exodus is a convenient word. Another more accurate one is that the community has shrunk and aged. It didn't disappear.

What does this mean for London?

A neighbor moving out of his cage is not proof that "everyone is coming back." It proves that some families count the pros and cons every season. The town hall, GP and school still serve the same district. Empty premises on Uxbridge Road are more often due to rent than to the "end of Polonia".