London vaccine uptake dips while measles clusters intensify
London’s childhood vaccination coverage remained the lowest of any English region in 2023–24 and, in the same period that follow-on catch-up efforts were under way, the capital went on to account for just over half of England’s laboratory-confirmed measles cases between January and early autumn 2025, underscoring an access-and-equity problem that is unevenly felt across boroughs.
NHS England’s accredited statistics, produced with UKHSA, show MMR2 coverage at age five fell nationally to 83.9% in 2023–24 (the lowest since 2009–10), with London recording the lowest regional coverage across multiple programmes over the same April 2023 to March 2024 window.
UKHSA’s vaccine-preventable disease dashboard records 811 laboratory-confirmed measles cases in England from 1 January to the latest October 2025 cut, of which 51% (417) were in London; case counts were concentrated in a small number of upper-tier authorities, led by Hackney with 104 cases (13% of the England total).
The geography of risk therefore maps onto existing borough inequalities: a region already trailing national coverage thresholds is also where exposure clustered most densely in 2025, even after the 2023–24 coverage year closed and local catch-up activity continued under UKHSA oversight.
Across indicators, the picture blends rates and counts: England’s MMR2 coverage at five years was 83.9% in 2023–24, London held the lowest regional coverage that year across several vaccines, and London logged 417 of England’s 811 measles confirmations in 2025 to date, with 104 in Hackney alone.
All figures derive from NHS England’s “Childhood Vaccination Coverage Statistics, England, 2023–24” (covering 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024) and the UKHSA vaccine-preventable diseases dashboard for measles (cases from 1 January 2025 to the latest published October update).
