United Kingdom Census 2001 - Organisation

Organisation

Similar to previous UK censuses, the 2001 census was organised by the three statistical agencies, – ONS, GROS, and NISRA, and coordinated at the national level by the Office for National Statistics. The Orders in Council to conduct the census, specifying the people and information to be included in the census, were made under the authority of the Census Act 1920 in Great Britain, and the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 in Northern Ireland. In England and Wales these regulations were made by the Census Order 2000 (SI 744/2000), in Scotland by the Census (Scotland) Order 2000 (SSI 68/2000), and in Northern Ireland by the Census Order (Northern Ireland) 2000 (SRNI 168/2000).

The census was administered through self-completion forms, in most cases delivered by enumerators to households and communal establishments in the three weeks before census night on 29 April. For the first time return by post was used as the main collection method, with enumerators following up in person where the forms were not returned. The postal response rate was 88% in England and Wales, 91% in Scotland, and 92% in Northern Ireland. A total of 81,000 field staff were employed across the UK (70,000 in England and Wales, 8,000 in Scotland and 3,000 in Northern Ireland). The census was conducted at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis, which led to extra precautions being adopted by the field staff, and suggestions that the census may have to be postponed. However, it was reported that the disease outbreak did not affect the effectiveness of the collection process.

The census was estimated to cost £259m over its 13 year cycle from the start of planning in 1993 to the delivery of final results in 2006. Printing of the 30 million census forms was subcontracted to Polestar Group, and processing of the returned census forms was subcontracted to Lockheed Martin in a contract worth £54m. The forms were initially scanned into digital format, then read with OMR and OCR, with manual entry where the automatic process could not read the forms. The forms were then pulped and recycled, and the digital copies printed onto microfilm for storage and release after 100 years. Once the data were returned to the statistics agencies it underwent further processing to ensure consistency and to impute missing values.