Census Data (Bromley) (Hansard, 16 October 2001)

§ Ruth Kelly

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the national statistician. I have asked him to reply.

Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Eric Forth, dated 16 October 2001: As National Statistician and Registrar General for England and Wales I have been asked to reply to your recent questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject of the 2001 Census in Bromley. (7966–69) In answer to your first question, the target date for mid-year 2001 population estimates by sex and age for all local authority areas (and including the London borough of Bromley) based on the 2001 Census is August 2002. These will include an adjustment for births, deaths and migration between Census Day (29 April 2001) and 30 June 2001. The target date for summary Census results—Key Statistics for areas throughout England and Wales (including London boroughs) is December 2002. They will be laid before Parliament and accessible through the National Statistics website. With regard to your second question, at this stage I am unable to provide detailed information on the response rate to the Census in Bromley. This will be available in Autumn 2002. Currently ONS estimates that the 2001 Census response rate nationally will reach 98 per cent of households. The full census data for Bromley will be published along with the detailed results for all the other local authority areas in the first half of 2003; these will be accessible via the National Statistics website. In your final question you ask what measures will be taken to provide accurate and reliable census data for Bromley. A number of steps have either already been implemented or will be taken to ensure this. Prior to the Census an important new initiative was the Community liaison programme which had as its main objectives: To facilitate enumeration and ensure full coverage. To help provide a source of potential field staff. To advertise the Census and underline its uses. To provide help to individual members of local communities. To help with translations and advertising. This, coupled with the new strategy of asking the public to post their completed forms back, enabled resources to be targeted to where they were most needed. 1214W Despite these efforts, it was always anticipated that some people would not be counted and that the degree of under-enumeration would vary across the country. The extent and nature of such under-enumeration will be more accurately assessed than ever before by the extensive, separate, follow-up Census Coverage Survey carried out by interviewing around 300,000 households shortly after the Census enumeration was completed. Once the interview responses and all the Census returns have been analysed, we will have a definitive picture of how well we have done at Local Authority level. The sample size for London was large enough for estimates of levels of under-enumeration for each borough to be made and will enable ONS to create a complete dataset for analysis of individual communities that takes account of this estimated under-enumeration. Information about the quality of Census data will be published on the National Statistics website and brought together in a Census Quality Report to be published in 2003.