I remember as a child, being driven into Slough and seeing the sign 'Welcome to Slough - Safety Town' , beneath that 'Population 86,000'.
The last two digits had removable boards, like the scoreboards at cricket grounds, so you could drive past a week later and the population would read 86,002.
By the time I could drive, the sign had been amended to 'Welcome to Slough - Anti Nuclear Town' 'population 87,000'.
In my 40's, I'd assumed the population had doubled simply because of the Asian influx and the number of new houses built, the existing Indian population had expanded, great people, I grew up with them but it was the Pakistani population that went through the roof. The latter were converting garages in their gardens to accommodate family.
In my last few years there the Council were issuing 12,000 new NI numbers per year, deduct a few hundred school leavers from that figure and the balance was entirely Polish workers.
Aside from multi occupancy rentals where Polish workers were sleeping in shifts, often on kitchen worktops to cope with the numbers (illegally) in one house, the Pakistani community were engaged in a building boom putting up garages in gardens that could accommodate half a dozen poles.
A lot of people complained to the council and there were a number of newspaper articles (can't remember if it was the Guardian or the Mail) about 'Ghetto towns' within Slough, there were literally areas that resembled African townships, The complaints fell on deaf ears because many of the MO and illegal dwellings were owned by councillors.
When I left Slough, having lived there 50 years, I know for a fact the population had more than doubled from my formative years, I suspect that in reality it had trebled. When I read that the official population was 130,000 I thought, F**k off!.