The census and future provision of population statistics in England and Wales

Please note: Beyond 2011 programme closed in January 2015. The new Census Transformation Programme (CTP) will develop the 2021 Census.

The census and the future provision of population statistics in England and Wales

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) consultation on the census and the future provision of population statistics in England and Wales closed on December 13 2013.

The consultation covered two potential approaches for taking the census in the future:

• A census once a decade, like that conducted in 2011, but primarily online.

• A census using existing government data and compulsory annual surveys.

Both approaches would provide annual statistics about the size of the population, nationally and for local authorities. A census using existing data and surveys would provide more statistics about the characteristics of the population every year. An online census would provide more detailed statistics once a decade.

We received a very encouraging number of submissions and would like to thank all those who spent a considerable amount of time and effort compiling these.

A report on the public consultation (1.16 Mb Pdf) has now been published.

If you wish to contact us to discuss any of the issues raised by the consultation details can be found below:

Contact details:
Beyond 2011 Programme
Office for National Statistics
Email: Beyond2011@ons.gov.uk'

Confidence Interval Tool

As part of its ongoing engagement with users, ONS has developed a tool to allow users to calculate precision of estimates for specific socio-demographic characteristics of interest. This can be used to provide an indication of the level of precision that would be achieved (using an annual survey with a simple random sample design) for an estimate of a population group of a given size within a geographic area with a known population.