Households across England and Wales will soon be asked to take part in the Census 2021.  Census day is 21st March 2021, and households will receive letters with online codes allowing them to take part from early March.

This census will be the first to be run predominantly online and includes questions about age and sex, work, health, education, household size and ethnicity.  For the first time, there will be a question asking people whether they have served in the armed forces, as well as voluntary questions for those aged 16 and over on sexual orientation and gender identity.

As set out in the Census white paper, the aim is to provide outputs that are:

• nationally accurate as measured by a confidence interval of plus or minus 0.2%, with bias less than 0.5% for England and Wales;

• high-quality locally with 95% confidence intervals for all local authorities of plus or minus 3%;

• minimal variation within local authority area;

• response rate targets of 94% nationally and 80% locally in all local authorities, to support these quality levels;

• timely and easy to use (first results within a year).

From spring 2022, as results are released by the ONS, Oxfordshire Insight will publish key findings for Oxfordshire’s communities.  We are expecting to see changes in housing type and tenure, living arrangements and social statistics such as age and ethnicity.

For more information on plans for the Census 2021 survey, visit census.gov.uk