UK Emigration - Spain top European destination

A new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research envisages that as many as 3.3 million pensioners might move abroad by the middle of the century. This would be a threefold increase in the 1 million or so British pensioner already living overseas.

All in all, an estimated 5.5 million British people live permanently abroad – almost 10% of the UK population. During 2005, some 2,000 Brits left the country for good every week. “If current trends continue, we could expect as many as a million more British nationals to emigrate over the next 5 years” the report’s authors write. Australia is the most popular overseas destination, with 1.3 million Brits now living down under. Spain is the second most popular destination, with 761,000 British emigrants.

Within Europe, Spain is the most popular destination by a wide margin. Ireland is next, with 291,000, ahead of France with 200,000. Other popular European ‘quality of life’ destinations are Cyprus (59,000), Portugal (38,000), Turkey (34,000), Italy (26,000), and Greece (18,000).

Including part time residents, there are 990,000 Brits in Spain, 74,636 of whom are pensioners. By age group, 39.4% are in the 45-64 years of age bracket, and 24.7% are 25-44 years old. To date, only 21.5% are 65 or above.

These figures show that, when it comes to attracting Brits, Spain continues to enjoy a thumping lead over the European competition. France is Spain’s biggest ‘quality of life’ competitor, but almost four times as many Brits choose to live (and buy property) in Spain than in France. In terms of popularity, all other European destinations are almost insignificant in comparison to Spain.

As the number of Brits abandoning the UK in favour of a better quality of life abroad increases, Spain will continue to be the top European destination, and may even increase its lead over competitive destinations. Spain’s reputation has taken a hit recently because of illegal building scandals, corruption scandals, and the scandalous behaviour of some large property sales organisations, all of which have combined to undermine buyer confidence in Spain. But these problems will be sorted out, and schemes will emerge to help Brits buy with total security in Spain. Once this has happened, there will be nowhere that can compete with Spain’s quality of life, whilst only being a couple of hours by plane from the UK.