Nearly one in 10 people living in the UK last year were foreign citizens, according to a major international report.

Numbers rose by 6.4 per cent to reach 5.95 million between 2015 and 2016, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found.

It means 9.2 per cent of the population are from overseas, the think tank's International Migration Outlook report showed.

The study found that asylum applications in the UK fell by 7 per cent to 30,600 last year, the first drop since 2010.

More Iranians, some 4,780, made asylum claims in the UK than any other nationality, followed by Pakistanis (3,701) and Iraqis (3,644).