Oxfordshire feedback forms for the Census Quality Assurance process

Dyddiad y datganiad:
26 July 2022

FOI ref: FOI/2022/4273

You asked

Please provide relevant correspondence in respect of all the Oxfordshire Local Authorities please.  These include: Oxford City Council, Cherwell District Council, Vale of White Horse District Council, South Oxfordshire District Council, West Oxfordshire District Council and Oxfordshire County Council.

We said

Thank you for your request.

Please see the attached documents:

These are the feedback forms supplied to ONS by Oxford City Council, West Oxfordshire Council and Oxfordshire County Council as part of the quality assurance process for the 2021 Census.

Three local authorities in Oxfordshire did not provide feedback to the ONS during this process. Those were Cherwell District Council, Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council.

Please be aware that the response provided by the local authorities related to indicative Census figures before the full processing and quality assurance was completed. This further processing may have resulted in changes in the estimates. More information on the census processing and adjustments made as a result of quality assurance is provided in Maximising the quality of Census 2021 population estimates.

Provisional Census figures have been redacted under Section 22A of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). The provisional data is contributing to an ongoing piece of research, the Census, and finalised figures will be published in the future. This applies as we also believe that the finalised Census figures and the ONS would likely be prejudiced by the release of the requested information.

Release of the requested figures would contravene the Code of Practice for Statistics by putting information into the public domain prior to the finalised figures being published.  This information could therefore present misleading findings from the project that are not high quality, accurate, valuable, and trustworthy and therefore could damage the integrity of the project itself and would also have wider repercussions for the reputation of ONS, as this action would likely damage trust in official statistics.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We appreciate arguments in favour of transparency about the data held by public authorities. However, the release of figures that do not meet the requirements of the Code of Practice for Statistics would not be in the public interest. The public may be misled by the provisional figures, leading to inaccurate conclusions being drawn from the information. Therefore, the release of this information would only inhibit public understanding about the subject matter. This is a particular concern at this stage, as we do not yet hold finalised figures that we can put into the public domain to counter any inaccurate information. Damage to public trust in official statistics would also not be in the public interest, as the government and the public would no longer be able to rely on official statistical information to facilitate decision-making on public policy. Therefore, policies would be less likely to benefit the public.

On balance, the public interest test falls in favour of withholding the requested information in this instance.

Personal data has been redacted from this document under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

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