A nationwide
census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...
, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th
UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194.
The 2001 UK census was organised by the
Office for National Statistics (ONS) in
England and Wales
England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is En ...
, the
General Register Office for Scotland
The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) ( gd, Oifis Choitcheann a' Chlàraidh na h-Alba) was a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adop ...
(GROS) and the
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). Detailed results by region, council area, ward and
output area
ONS codes are geocodes maintained by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics to represent a wide range of geographical areas of the UK, for use in tabulating census and other statistical data. These codes are also known as GSS codes, ...
are available from their respective websites.
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).
[Office for National Statistics, General Register Office for Scotland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2004). Census 2001 Definitions. London: The Stationery Office. ]
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.
[Graham Vidler]
The 2001 Census of Population
. Research Paper 01/21. House of Commons Library. 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.
Enumeration
The overall response rate for the census, that is the proportion of the population who were included on a census form, was estimated to be 94% in England and Wales,
[Office for National Statistics]
Census 2001: National and local response rates
last revised 13 January 2006. 96.1% in Scotland and 95.2% in Northern Ireland. This was due to a number of factors: households with no response, households excluding residents from their returns, and addresses not included in the enumeration. In Manchester for example 25,000 people from 14,000 addresses were not enumerated because the address database was two years out of date. The Local Authority with the lowest response was
Kensington and Chelsea with 64%.
Hackney had the next lowest response at 72%. Out of all local authorities, the ten lowest response rates were all in London.
The results still represent 100 per cent of the population, however, because some individuals not completing their forms were instead identified by census enumerators, and through the use of cross-matching with a follow-up survey.
One Number Census
The results from the 2001 census were produced using a methodology known as the One Number Census. This was an attempt to adjust the census counts and impute answers to allow for estimated under-enumeration measured by the Census Coverage Survey (sample size 320,000 households), resulting in a single set of
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction usi ...
estimates.
Religion
Although the 1851 census had included a question about religion on a separate response sheet, whose completion was not compulsory, the 2001 census was the first in Great Britain to ask about the
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
of respondents on the main census form. An amendment to the 1920 Census Act (the
Census (Amendment) Act 2000) was passed by Parliament to allow the question to be asked, and to allow the response to this question to be optional. The inclusion of the question enabled the
Jedi census phenomenon to take place in the United Kingdom. In England and Wales 390,127 people stated their religion as
Jedi, as did 14,052 people in Scotland.
The percentages of religious affiliations were:
*
Christian: 72.0%
*
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
: 3%
*
Hindu: 1%
*
Sikh: 0.6%
*
Jewish: 0.5%
*
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
: 0.3%
* Any other religion: 0.3%
15% declared themselves of
no religion (including Jedi at 0.7%, more than those who declared themselves as Sikh, Jewish or Buddhist) and 8% did not respond to the question.
Ethnicity
Results
The census ethnic groups included
White (
White British
White British is an ethnicity classification used for the native white population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British in the United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White British population wa ...
,
White Irish,
Other White),
Mixed (
White and Black Caribbean,
White and Black African,
White and Asian,
Other Mixed),
Asian or Asian British (
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
,
Pakistani,
Bangladeshi,
Other Asian
Other often refers to:
* Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy
Other or The Other may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack
* ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...
),
Black or Black British (
Black Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the t ...
,
African,
Other Black
A number of different systems of classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom exist. These schemata have been the subject of debate, including about the nature of ethnicity, how or whether it can be categorised, and the relationship betwe ...
) and
Chinese or Other Ethnic Group.
Since the UK census relies on self-completion,
the composition of the other ethnic group category is not fixed. Analysis by the
Office for National Statistics of the 220,000 people in England and
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
who ticked the other ethnic group box in the 2001 census reveals that 53 per cent were born in the
Far East, 10 per cent in the UK, 10 per cent in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
, and 7 per cent in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
People could write in an ethnic group under the 'other' heading. 26 per cent did not specify an ethnicity, but of the remainder 23 per cent wrote
Filipino, 21 per cent
Japanese, 11 per cent
Vietnamese, 11 per cent
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
, 6 per cent Middle Eastern and 4 per cent
North African.
English identity
Controversy surrounding the classification of ethnic groups began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
and
Northern Ireland would be able to check a box describing themselves as Scottish or Irish, an option not available for English respondents.
With an absence of an English tick-box, the only other tickbox available was "white-British", "Irish", or "other". However, if 'English' was written in under the "any other white background" it was not clear whether it would be counted as an ethnic group in same the way as the Welsh.
[ Following criticism, English was included as a tick-box option in the 2011 census.
]
Welsh identity
It is sometimes claimed that the 2001 census revealed that two-thirds of the population of Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
described themselves as of Welsh nationality.[Census shows Welsh language rise. Friday 14 February 2003. Retrieved 12-04-07](_blank)
/ref> In fact, the 2001 census did not collect any information on nationality. Controversy surrounding the classification of ethnic group began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
and Northern Ireland would be able to check a box describing themselves as Scottish or Irish, an option not available for Welsh respondents.[Census equality backed by Plaid 23 September 2000 extracted 12-04-07](_blank)
/ref> Prior to the census, '' Plaid Cymru'' backed a petition calling for the inclusion of a Welsh tickbox and for the National Assembly of Wales to have primary law-making powers and its own National Statistics Office. With an absence of a Welsh tickbox, the only other tickbox available was "white-British", "Irish", or "other".
Cornish identity
For the first time in a UK census, those wishing to describe their ethnicity as Cornish were given their own code number (06) on the 2001 UK census form, alongside those for people wishing to describe themselves as English, Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
, Irish or Scottish. About 34,000 people in Cornwall and 3,500 people in the rest of the UK wrote on their census forms in 2001 that they considered their ethnic group to be Cornish. This represented nearly 7% of the population of Cornwall. Various Cornish organisations were campaigning for the inclusion of the Cornish tick box on the next census in 2011. Cornish demand tick box for 2011 Census
/ref>
See also
* Demographics of England from the 2001 United Kingdom census
The demography of England has since 1801 been measured by the decennial national census, and is marked by centuries of population growth and urbanization. Due to the lack of authoritative contemporary sources, estimates of the population o ...
* Demographics of Scotland
The demography of Scotland includes all aspects of population, past and present, in the area that is now Scotland. Scotland has a population of 5,463,300, as of 2019. The population growth rate in 2011 was estimated as 0.6% per annum accordin ...
* Jedi census phenomenon
* List of moons
The Solar System's planets, and its most likely dwarf planets, are known to be orbited by at least 221 natural satellites, or moons. At least 20 of them are large enough to be gravitationally rounded; of these, all are covered by a crust of ...
* Census 2001 Ethnic Codes
* National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
References
External links
Census 2001 website
(England & Wales)
Census 2001 National Report for England and Wales from data.gov.uk
Scotland's Census Results OnLine
(England & Wales)
{{Census in the United Kingdom
2001
2001 censuses