Beyond 2011 Consultation

Please note: the Beyond 2011 programme closed in January 2015. The Census Transformation Programme (CTP) is developing 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 13 December 2013.

The consultation covered two potential approaches for taking the census in the future. They are to take:

• 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.

You can read the report on the public consultation (1.16MB, PDF).

Confidence Interval Tool

As part of our ongoing engagement with users, ONS 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.