Ref: FOI/2022/4534
You asked
I would like to request information on Cameroonians in Britain. Specifically those in the working class age and occupational categories.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request asking about information on Cameroonians in Britain - specifically those in the working class age and occupational categories.
We publish estimates of the Population of the UK by country of birth and nationality, the latest of which is for the year to 30 June 2021. From these we estimate that living in the UK, there are 16,000 people who were born in Cameroon with a confidence interval of +/- 7,000 and 7,000 people with Cameroonian nationality, with a confidence interval of +/- 5,000).
There are limitations to this data as descendants of Cameroon origin born in the UK and holding British citizenship who consider themselves Cameroonian won't appear in these estimates.
The data we would normally use for occupation by age are from the Annual Population Survey (APS). When we released estimates for year ending June 2021, we included a specific warning that estimates below EU/non-EU level are not reliable in the new post-Covid weighting of the APS data.
Further, sample levels of Cameroonians in the APS were so low that it would not be possible to produce statistically robust estimates from them.
Shortly we will be, however, publishing results from the 2021 Census, which will produce data by ethnic group.
Ethnic group datasets will be available in the ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion topic summary. Please note this has a provisional release date of 29 November 2022.
We have detailed the variables and classifications we plan to include in the topic summaries and area profiles in the corresponding tabs of the Topic summaries and area profile specifications spreadsheet.
If you go to the topic summary datasets tab and go to row 27 'Ethnic group (detailed)', if you scroll to the right there is a link that will take you to the list of ethnic groups we intend to publish data for. Row 47 outlines 'Cameroonians' as an output for this dataset.
Please note, Country of Birth data, National Identity and Passport held does not have Cameroons as a category, instead there is 'Africa: Central and Western Africa: Other Central and Western Africa' which may be of interest to you.
The Census does not ask questions about social class. However, the census does include data on National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC) and Occupation, this will be part of the labour market and travel to work topic summary. This has a provisional release date of 8 December 2022.
Multivariate data, which combines variables in a single dataset, such as ethnic group by occupation or NS-SEC, will be published during phase two of the Census 2021 outputs release schedule.
The census information on this topic held is therefore exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
You can obtain more details about census data from 2021 Census.Enquiries@ons.gov.uk
When accessing any of our files, please read the 'notes, terms and conditions' contained within them.
Should you require anything further, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at pop.info@ons.gov.uk.