The census is senseless

[Orior]

A think-tank reckons the census is a pile of cack.

Think tank says 'Dump the census'
21 August 2008

The National Local Government Network (NLGN) has said the 10 yearly national census should be scrapped

In a new report titled Local Counts: The future of the census, it says the information gathered in the 2011 census will be out of date by the time it is published, will be insufficiently detailed and could underestimate the number of people living in Britain.

It says it cannot accurately reflect the true state of Britain because of poor quality information on households, high rates of population mobility and a growing reluctance to fill in official forms.
Figures based on the census are used to allocate £100bn of government spending for local authorities and primary care trusts. The NLGN says the 2001 census undercounted the population by 900,000, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, and that local authority areas have seen their population enumerated at 10% less than their actual numbers.

The NLGN proposes that Britain should follow the example of other European countries, such as the Netherlands, who have moved to a reliance on administrative databases to provide a continually updated 'rolling' register. It says public organisations already collect data and information on citizens through a large number of streams and that these can be supplemented by targeted surveys to profile the population and its needs. This new approach, it is argued, should be introduced as soon as possible.

The research indicates that distrust of census statistics has already led some councils to develop their own population data from existing resources including GP address records, the electoral roll and georeferencing systems. This enables them to drill down to the neighbourhood, street and individual household level, and plot current and future demand for services or target vulnerable parts of the community.

The report suggests the alternative approach could save at least £250m on the cost of the census.

NLGN director Chris Leslie said: "The census has been around for two hundred years and it is no longer gathering the right sort of data for modern public services. We are left in a situation where not only does central government not know where it should distribute grants, but local councils do not have the information or flexibility to work out where best to spend money to tackle worklessness and crime, or to gauge where future demand will be for care homes and schools.

"It is time for the government to scrap this outdated method. NLGN's proposal would make the most of the incredible amount of data already collected, drive joined up services across government and save significant sums of money over the long term."

The report recommends that the government should:

set up a new review including the Local Government Association, statistical users and the new Statistics Authority focused on how a new system based on existing administrative database sources could be introduced by 2011;
institute a system for national address registration;
establish a new duty on local authorities, their partners and central government to work together to share data to form the basis of population information;
and ensure that a national property register can be developed by resolving the ongoing frictions between Ordnance Survey and the National Land and Property Gazetteer.

Wouldn't it have been great if the senseless undercount had been all the irish based british? We could then sail straight into a united ireland and

- Replace coat-trailing triumphalistic orange parades with shared heritage festivals
- Have a soccer team that might won somat
- Have cheaper fuel
- Be a nation was again
- Save money by turning Stormont into a hotel
- Take holidays in Rockall
- Remove the border economy
- Allow Peter Robinson to visit Clontibret without getting his car windows smashed
etc etc etc