TWO East Lancashire boroughs have some of the UK’s top fertility rates according to a new report.

Blackburn with Darwen ranked fifth with 2.25 children per mother in the last year with Burnley in eighth with 2.19 children per mother.

Barking and Dagenham has the highest fertility rate in the UK.

A rate of 2.47 children per mother was recorded for Barking and Dagenham in 2016, marking a slight rise from 2.42 children per mother the previous year.

In second place was Forest Heath in Suffolk, with a rate of 2.31, followed in third place by Slough in Berkshire (2.29).

By contrast the City of London recorded the lowest fertility rate in 2016 (0.75), followed by Westminster (1.20) and Edinburgh (1.22).

The average for the whole of the country was 1.79, down from 1.92 in 2012.

All four nations of the UK have seen the average rate fall in 2016, compared with figures in 2012.

Scotland saw the largest drop, from 1.67 in 2012 to 1.52 in 2016, followed by Wales (1.74 in 2016, down from 1.88 in 2012) and England (1.81 in 2016, down from 1.94 in 2012).

In total, there were 696,271 live births in England and Wales in 2016, a decrease of 0.2 per cent from 2015, with the total fertility rate (TFR) down from 1.82 in 2015 to 1.81 children per woman in 2016.

The average age of mothers in 2016 increased to 30.4 years, compared with 30.3 years in 2015 and women aged 40 and over had a higher fertility rate than women aged under 20 for the second time since 1947.

Over a quarter (28.2 per cent) of live births in 2016 were to mothers born outside the UK, the highest level on record and the stillbirth rate decreased to 4.4 per 1,000 total births, the lowest rate since 1992.

Nicola Haines, Vital Statistics Outputs Branch, Office for National Statistics: “The percentage of babies born outside of marriage or civil partnership in 2016 was 48 per cent; of these, two-thirds had parents who lived together.

“The percentage of births outside of marriage or civil partnership has remained relatively unchanged since 2012, following a notable increase from 5 per cent in the mid-1950s. This increase coincided with cohabitation becoming more common as an alternative to marriage, particularly at younger ages.”