Address Index update – Student Halls and Communal establishments
Accurate addressing is a vital to ensuring everyone is invited to take part in Census 2021.
The work that LA Land and Property Gazetteer custodians undertake is an essential part of ensuring address records are up to date. It’s important that this work continues as normal, and to support efforts to ensure the accuracy of student accommodation GeoPlace contacted all custodians earlier this year providing guidance and setting out the actions required. The guidance is taken from section 11 and Appendix C of the GeoPlace document . Further guidance and a discussion thread is also available to LLPG Custodians through Khub.
GeoPlace has produced lists of student accommodation for LAs who already have this data uploaded on to their system. Any LA who does not have student accommodation uploaded will not have received a list.
In addition to this activity, we’ve set up an ONS address resolution team whose primary role is to support an accurate census address index. Their work does not replace what is already being done within local authorities.
The address resolution team are currently checking the accuracy of some student hall information and seeking information where there are gaps. This work is useful as part of making contact with all halls and we are aware that local authorities have been unable to complete room level addressing because of the current pressures of COVID19. Going forward, they will move on to checking other types of communal establishment addresses such as monasteries and care homes to confirm the type of communal establishments and bed spaces.
Working with Universities to support the census
We are writing to Vice Chancellors/Principals explaining how enumerating students is a critical part of the census, and that we will count them at their term-time address.
As part of our census preparations, we are asking universities to support us by putting us in touch with the right contacts to provide information about accommodation and to help us to communicate with students.
Council Tax and Census 2021
The Council Tax team at ONS need your help to get your council to supply council tax data.
Council tax data are important for the 2021 Census because:
- they are a vital data source for quality assuring census returns
- they allow groups who often give low returns to the census to be better represented
- they will help to improve population statistics which allows for more accurate planning of local services.
The more accurate and complete our council tax dataset is, the better-informed decisions can be made by local and national government.
From April 2020, the council tax data acquisition was added to the Single Data List (SDL) by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), with agreement of the Local Government Gateway Group. This is the list of data that local authorities must submit to central government.
While ONS has the mandatory powers to ensure local authorities supply data to us, we still prefer to work with councils and collect data through our permissive powers where possible.
This is where you come in. Please find out who in your authority is talking to ONS about Council Tax and ensure they know how important it is your census work and its delivery.
Council Tax data is a key element for the 2021 census preparations in your area. Each council needs to have signed an agreement with us and arranged to start supplying data. Have you talked to the Council Tax contact to ensure they know the importance of it to your census work and its delivery?
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, data supplying has been paused until August. To ensure that we can resume data sharing in August, all councils need to be in contact with ONS by the end of July 2020.
ONS will also provide New Burden Funding to enable councils to supply council tax data, and your existing revenues and benefits software provider will provide the associated software module free of charge. We also have a helpful team who can answer any questions at council.tax@ons.gov.uk.
If they are not already, your authority needs to start supplying ONS with council tax data as soon as possible.
The Census Schools Campaign
To inspire the next generation to get involved in the census, we’ve developed an education programme to teach pupils about the importance of the once-in-a-decade event.
The primary school programme, ‘Let’s Count!’, aims to excite and engage both children and families with the census. With maths and statistics at its core, the cross-curricular initiative provides lesson plans and interactive activities for pupils to learn about the relevance of statistics to a range of other subjects.
Let’s Count! was piloted in the 2019 census rehearsal with great success. 58% of schools in the rehearsal areas took part, with a total of 148 schools participating across Carlisle, Ceredigion, Hackney and Tower Hamlets. The programme encouraged high levels of student engagement and 91% of teachers at participating schools said Let’s Count! made a positive educational impact at their school. Additionally, 82% of teachers said their children were strongly engaged with the activities and 87% said they would run the Let’s Count! activity again in 2021.
We are currently improving the programme to create an even stronger set of activities to engage primary school pupils to get involved with the census. Let’s Count! will be rolled out in 2021 across England and Wales, with school recruitment starting in September 2020
We will be writing to the Head Teachers of primary and secondary schools in the autumn, and we will ensure that local authorities who deal with education are kept up to date. We’ll keep everyone informed on our developing plans in this area through these newsletters.
The census is on social media!
Now, more than ever before, social media will play a huge part in telling residents about the census and encouraging them to fill it in.
From sharing census facts, case studies and key information, to revealing the census forms of famous people from the past, our social channels provide a great opportunity to engage with the census.
We’re really looking forward to working with you on social media. Later this year we’ll be making resources available on the census website. These will include example social media posts and a suite of images that your comms team and councillors will be welcome to use. We’ll also keep you updated via this newsletter when new content becomes available.
If you haven’t already, be sure to follow the census on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube! @Census2021
Tweet us using #Census2021
Feel free to contact the team on census.social.media@ons.gov.uk
Local Authority Regional Workshops - Update
We have now completed our first series of 13 interactive workshops. 83% of local authorities in England and Wales were represented with over 400 attendees, and feedback has been positive. For example:
“I found it really useful with plenty of opportunities to ask questions as we went.”
“This has been a really useful workshop to inform us of the Census process and what LAs need to do to support this.”
During these events we’ve shared:
- An overview of support for local authorities
- How the census operation will work
- Our processes and challenges around enumerating special population groups and communal establishments.
We are investigating ways of adjusting our workshops in response to your feedback. These include shorter, more specific events and the use of different meeting software. You have also told us that you would like future sessions including the following topics:
- Further information on local authority roles, responsibilities and key dates
- Addressing the census
We are currently working through your frequently asked questions and survey comments and responses will be available shortly. Thank you to all those who attended and to those who responded to the survey. Remember, completing the surveys helps us to plan our future sessions and to ensure we share with you the information you most need.
Census 2021 paper questionnaires
The questions and response options for Census 2021 are included in the Census Regulations for England and for Wales (for more information see our legislation and policy page). Census 2021 is online-first and so paper forms are considered a secondary mode of completion.
You can find more details about how we developed the paper and electronic questionnaires in the question and questionnaire development overview for Census 2021 report and our question development reports which we will be publishing throughout 2020.
Census 2021 paper questionnaires are now available to view online
Have you missed previous Newsletters?
Catch up here
- Issue One September 2019 – featuring how we will work together and testing processes for the 2019 Rehearsal
- Issue Two February 2020 – featuring the timeline of census activities and preparing for the 2020 workshops
- Issue Three March 2020 – featuring the 9 strands of partnership working with local authorities and an update on addressing.
- Issue Four April 2020 – featuring regional workshops to prepare you for census
- Issue Five May 2020 – Recruitment update – census engagement managers and community advisers.
Useful Links
The Census White Paper: Help Shape Our Future: The 2021 Census of Population and Housing in England and Wales https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/legislationandpolicy
Census 2021 Website
https://census.gov.uk/
ONSs approach and processes for assuring the quality of 2021 Census data:
The ONS initial proposal for how we will check the Census 2021 processes and results to make sure users can rely on them
https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/approachandprocessesforassuringthequalityofthe2021censusdata
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