Will 2021 be the last census

[Dick47]

Is it too late to start a campaign/petition about the proposed ending of census taking?

 

[peter]

A petition would be unlikely to be effective, not least because relatively few would sign, and even fewer would understand the issues on both sides.

It would be much better if the users of the statistics that the ONS produces could be persuaded that having a census of some sort would greatly improve the quality of the data that they use. They're the people who the ONS is looking to please - apart from the Government who probably see this as a way of saving money, though I suspect it would be a money pit.

 

[Stuart]

This thread followed an item in the November 2023 newsletter about the ONS plan to not do a census in 2031, but to collect data from within government instead. There was a consultation then (which we all missed) and that led to the plan being dropped; you may have seen headlines that ONS will do proper census of everyone in 2031 (it was also in the mid-June 2025 newsletter).

Well, there has been another consultation which I think we all missed as well. It started last October, and ends this Wednesday 4 February 2026. This one is about what the census should contain, asking users of the data for their views. Of course the main "product" of the census is datasets of statistics about us, but the future use of the underlying data by social and family historians is in the list of know uses.

This ONS page has links to the 2023 consultation, the reports that came out of it, and the current one. There's a lot to plough through, but perhaps this may lead to further opportunities to give inputs, as they say this:

Building on our understanding of user needs from the 2023 consultation on the future of population and migration statistics, and from extensive engagement with stakeholders over the past decade, we invite you to respond to this consultation to inform decisions on which topics are included in the next census.

This consultation, which runs until 4 February 2026, represents the next stage in our ongoing engagement with users of population statistics as we prepare for Census 2031. Following the consultation, we will continue to seek stakeholder views to support the development of census questions and census outputs.