2001 Census and earlier
Beyond 2011 – the 2021 Census
Every 10 years, for over 200 years, every household in England and Wales has been required to respond to the Census.
The 2011 Census successfully provided population statistics that will be used for the next decade by planners, policy makers and researchers across the public and private sectors. But our population is changing rapidly and the need to understand these changes will continue. Improvements in technology and government data sources also offer new opportunities.
During the last few years, the Beyond 2011 Programme assessed the different possible approaches to producing population and housing statistics in future. On the 2 March 2014, the national statistician recommended that the next Census in 2021 will be a predominantly online Census, supplemented by the further use of administrative and survey data.Following this recommendation, the Office for National Statistics set up a Census Transformation Programme (CTP). The vision for the programme is to make the best use of all available population data to help shape tomorrow, and the CTP will now take forward this vision through three major strands of concurrent work:
- strand one will look at how to run the 2021 Census data collection operation and its coverage survey
- strand two will deal with how we integrate Census and administrative and survey data to provide and disseminate Census outputs
- strand three will look further ahead, addressing how we produce population statistics beyond the 2021 Census
For more information about the work of the CTP and the 2021 Census, click
here.