Blog by Sarah Cumbers, RSS CEO
The UK Statistics Authority has recommended that the government commission the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to deliver a census of England and Wales in 2031, alongside similar recommendations from the relevant bodies for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The RSS welcomes these recommendations and welcomes the user engagement conducted to reach them.
Before the last census, in 2021, the ONS had raised the possibility that this would be the last census. In the years since, they have been exploring whether it is possible to use administrative data sources (data held about citizens by the government) to recreate the detailed and rich picture of the UK that the census gives us.
The ONS ran a consultation on the future of the census in 2023. The RSS responded to this consultation, and we were supportive, in principle, of the aim of moving away from a decennial census. While the census provides an excellent snapshot of the UK at the point that it is conducted, it gets increasingly less accurate over the following decade – producing census-type information using a mix of admin-data and smaller surveys could provide more timely information about the UK’s population. However, there were a series of challenges that we argued the ONS needed to be able to conclusively overcome before we could fully support the proposal.
In the year or so since that consultation, the RSS has been engaging closely with the ONS, promoting a public statistics approach to the production of statistics; a more ambitious focus on user needs by ONS is central to that ask.
So we were very pleased to support the 2024 recommendation of the Lievesley Review of the UK Statistics Authority to introduce a triennial Statistics Assembly. We partnered with UKSA to deliver the first Assembly, and the event felt very positive from a user engagement perspective – it was well-attended by users and producers of statistics and had a real buzz to it.
One of the discussions at the Assembly that I attended focused on the future of the census. This session was an excellent demonstration of the value of the Assembly – a wide range of people set out how they used the census data and how important it was to them. Users questioned how key needs would be met using administrative data in future, and there was a clear message from users that there is currently demand for a survey. It is very good news that the ONS has listened to its users – both at the Assembly and through the formal consultation.
We hope that the government responds positively to this recommendation (given that last week’s Spending Review set aside money for a census, this would seem likely) and we look forward to working with the ONS to support preparations for the 2031 census. We hope the ONS will continue to explore using admin data and surveys to improve population statistics, to see if it is possible to get the quality of information provided by the census in other ways.