You asked
FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2570
Please could you provide the official population size for each parish where there is a parish or community council from 2018 to 2021 for England, Scotland and Wales.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request regarding population figures at parish level between 2018-2021.
Unfortunately, we only hold figures for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk.
For England and Wales, please see the following publication: Parish population estimates for mid-2001 to mid-2019 based on best fitting of output areas to parishes. Under 'Download associated with request', please click on and open the link, then double click on 'parish11_01_19_pop_est.xls' to open the excel spreadsheet, then click on 'Parish Populations - The number of persons by single year of age and sex for 2011 Parishes in England and Wales, mid-2001 to mid-2019'. This will provide the data you are looking or up to mid-2019.
Please note that we will not be creating any analysis on 2021 data until 2022, with the intention to publish this data in June 2022.
Please note that, we do not hold analysis showing these estimatees for mid-2020, and have no plans to reproduce these estimates for mid-2020 at the present time. However, it is possible for users to create these estimates for themselves using output area estimates published on the ONS website and an output area to parish lookup available from the ONS geoportal.
In order to do this you would need to refer to the following dataset mid-year population estimates data at output area level for England and Wales.
To access these datasets,
- Click on the link, scroll down and select the region of England and Wales for which you require Census Output Areas population estimates (i.e. East, England).
- Once you have selected a region,
- scroll down on the following page to 'Your download option' and download the zip folder with the title beginning 'Mid-2018'.
- Once your download is complete, open the xls document located within the folder.
- The data provided within this document is population estimates data by sex and single year of age at output area level.
Population estimates data at Parish Council level can then be constructed by using this dataset in conjunction with a lookup table from the ONS Geoportal website.
For example, the Output Area to Parish to Local Authority District (December 2011) Lookup in England and Wales lookup table enables you to use the population estimates by output area datasets to construct population estimates data for Parish Councils in England and Wales.
While we provide information about parishes (as below) we don't have a list of community or parish councils so are unable to help cross-reference our published parish data with those council areas. The National Association of Local Councils to whom many of these councils are affiliated may be able to help further.
When accessing any of our files please read the 'notes, terms and conditions' contained within them.
For additional guidance on how to use lookup tables, please contact the ONS Geography department at the following address: ons.geography@ons.gov.uk.