Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when the data from the 2021 Census will be published.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician

The Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

09 February 2022

Dear Baroness Kennedy,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking when the data from the 2021 Census will be published (HL5990).

We aim to release the first results for Census 2021 data on the population of England and Wales in late May 2022. This will be followed by the release of the full data from the census in stages through to spring 2023. This includes data for small areas on the full range and combinations of census variables that provide such a rich insight into the characteristics of the population. In total there will be billions of counts of information to inform decision making in the years ahead. The range of products planned will make census data accessible for people with a range of levels of interest and experience, from those with a passing interest in information about the country or their local area through to expert and professional users of data.

The planned release schedule for Census 2021 will make the information available significantly earlier than has been possible previously. Our proposed outputs and analysis release plans are set out on the Release Plans page on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website [1]. The ONS held a consultation on our Census 2021 outputs plans last year, further details and part one of the ONS’s response to feedback on the consultation are available on our website [2].

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/census2021outputs/releaseplans

2. https://consultations.ons.gov.uk/external-affairs/census-2021-outputs-consultation