Sexual orientation by legal partnership status
There are a number of quality-related aspects of the census data on sexual orientation that you should be aware of when using estimates on this topic. Read more in the sexual orientation and gender identity quality information page.
Read more about this quality notice.
Separate estimates by opposite and same-sex partnerships for the marital status categories “Separated”, “Divorced/dissolved” and “Widowed/surviving partners” are not available. This is because quality assurance showed the figures for some of the categories were unreliable.
Read more about this quality notice.
Summary
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in England and Wales by sexual orientation by legal partnership status. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
Variable and dataset information
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
- country - for example, Wales
- region - for example, London
- local authority - for example, Cornwall
- health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
- statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA
Sexual orientation
Classifies people according to the responses to the sexual orientation question. This question was voluntary and was only asked of people aged 16 years and over.
Marital and civil partnership status
Classifies a person according to their legal marital or registered civil partnership status on Census Day 21 March 2021.
It is the same as the 2011 census variable "Marital status" but has been updated for Census 2021 to reflect the revised Civil Partnership Act that came into force in 2019.
In Census 2021 results, "single" refers only to someone who has never been married or in a registered civil partnership.
Variables
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Protecting personal data
Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control.
In Census 2021, we:
- swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area (very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority)
- added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five – this might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation
Read more in Section 5 of our article Design for Census 2021.
Version history
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