Consultation over the Eastern Area Plan will continue - despite the latest census showing a declining population.

The census reveals that the resident population in April last year was 83,314 - 1.4 per cent lower than the figure in 2011.

But hundreds of hectares of green land could potentially be zoned for housing or employment as part of a new development plan for the east of the island which is currently subject to a preliminary publicity consultation.

The Area Plan for the East will guide development for the next 10 years and beyond and is based in part on a forecast that the population would rise from 84,497 in 2011 to 88,226 in 2017.

In Tynwald, Middle MHK Bill Shimmins said he ’did wonder’ whether the consultation on the Area Plan should continue given the census results.

His thoughts were echoed by Bill Henderson MHK who asked how it was ’sensible’ to carry on when the plan was based on ’old information’.

But Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas, who announced a white paper entitled ’Meeting our Population Challenges’ would be published and consulted on this autumn, said the ’simple and plain answer’ was "yes". ’Yes, it does make sense to carry on,’ he told the court.

Mr Thomas explained that the whole basis of the Area Plan was about ’planning, monitoring and managing’. Population was one piece of evidence but ’there are many more pieces of evidence’, he said.

Mr Thomas said the Programme for Government still assumes the population will grow but that the Programme was devised with the assumption the census was likely to show a fall in population.

The census also shows the core working age population fell by 2,000 between 2011 and 2016, with the biggest drop among 20-somethings.