Plans to replace 2031 census in England and Wales set to be abandoned after backlash
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/17/plans-to-replace-2031-census-in-england-and-wales-set-to-be-abandoned-after-backlash
Posted by ThatchersDirtyTaint
10 Comments
Hoorar. The census is the best. It’s existed since Roman times. It should never end.
It shouldn’t be considered our decision to make. It’s historical information for our descendants to look back on 2,000 more years from now. In the present it’s obviously useful for planning, infrastructure, resource distribution, utilities, farming, etc etc…..but it’s so much more than that.
So they can waste even more money changing things that isn’t broken
Only wanted to scrap it to hide facts about demographic change
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Nooo! As a foreigner working in academia, one of the best things about this country is the availability of data 😭
If you’re going to have a piecemeal approach then you need to have the census going alongside it to validate that it’s working correctly. Even if they do switch systems you can’t just switch without some overlap.
And even then doing the census every 25 years or so just to double check the maths would be incredibly valuable.
The use of existing datasets makes sense, so long as they are reliable and up-to-date. Plus there is another form of registration of home address that is applied consistently (notably Council Tax). But even then, there is so much that is missed that the Census picks up its worthwhile keeping it.
I work in Transport Planning, and the Travel to Work data from the Census is priceless to our work (and really screwed us up in the 2021 Census). We could use other data like mobile phone, but its prohibitively expensive to access even a minor sample, and it struggles to separate how people travel, particularly in urban areas. Its far from perfect, but the Census is among the best data sources we have.
The census can be used to calibrate the models that are used on a day to day basis. Eliminating it would be insane
Only time I can officially report I am not religious and hopefully shape policy around it, that is important and don’t I don’t think they could gather that from alternative sources considering it doesn’t really come up in conversation online
Not like the government would want to hide demographic data from us…