On 17 June 2025, the much-anticipated recommendation from the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) on the future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales was published, with recommendations for Northern Ireland and Scotland released on the same day.  

In brief, it was recommended that mandatory questionnaire-based censuses take place in all of the countries of the UK in 2031, while work continues to develop population and migration statistics based on administrative data to provide more frequent and timely estimates. 

This represented a significant milestone after genuine uncertainty about the future of the census following the England and Wales and Northern Ireland censuses in 2021 and the Scotland census in 2022. The recommendation was followed on 15 July 2025 by the government commissioning the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to conduct a mandatory, questionnaire-based, whole-population census of England and Wales in 2031. 

There has been real appetite and enthusiasm for alternatives to the census in the UK over the last two census cycles in particular. It’s understandable: censuses are expensive and it takes time to produce the results. Other countries have moved to less costly alternatives. However, expense doesn’t automatically mean poor value for money. With census, the breadth, depth and quality of the outputs are unmatched by other available sources across the UK at this time – either in isolation or in combination.  

Many countries who have moved to alternatives to a census have population registers alongside political and statistical ecosystems that enable close management of risk around dependency on indirect methods of data collection for government statistical purposes.

While the landscape differs in the UK, the ONS, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and National Records of Scotland have been breaking new ground with their work on generating administrative-based statistics that in due course may reach standards that render a census no longer a necessity. This is an exciting prospect; people are unlikely to object to more timely and more frequent data. However, progress must be balanced against the risk of some critical information not being produced at all. 

In other words, the move to routine production of statistics in this way in the UK must continue to be driven by a commitment to meeting users’ statistical needs, where users are not just consumers of statistics, but also those people who should be represented within the numbers themselves. 

The census includes, to a greater extent, people who are often under-represented in surveys and administrative data due to sampling limitations and limited engagement with service providers. 

Given new and emerging technologies, including AI-based technology, it seems likely that we will see acceleration in the coverage (geographical and variable) and reliability of population and migration statistics over time, which opens the door to transformation of the statistical landscape in ways that we cannot anticipate. 

So, it’s not “never” for census alternatives across the UK, it’s just “not yet”! 

The MRS and the MRS Census & GeoDems Group (CGG) have been focused on the future of the census since 2023. We contributed to the ONS consultation on the future of population and migration statistics in that year, and engage closely with the ONS and the Office for Statistics Regulation on an ongoing basis, including welcoming their regular attendance at CGG meetings. We were delighted to present at the future of the census session that took place at the inaugural UK Statistics Assembly in January 2025. It was valuable and instructive to hear in their own words the voices of stakeholders and, now that the recommendation has been made and accepted, to conclude that those voices, and ours, were listened to. 

The UK Statistics Assembly was also an opportunity to emphasise the importance of the census statistics that allow the derivation of Approximated Social Grade (ASG). This variable has been produced in conjunction with the UK statistical offices for the 2001, 2011 and 2021-2022 censuses. Erhard Meier, Corrine Moy and Barry Leventhal have all been fundamental to the design and implementation of the ASG, which is widely used across the market research sector, and it is a source of pride to continue the relationship with the statistical agencies in developing and testing the algorithm for each census round. 

The ASG variable is created by first building a model for predicting social grade across a market research source. The model employs key variables such as occupation, employment status and qualifications, that are available and identically coded for each household in the research dataset and the census. Therefore, the model built from market research may then be deployed across the census database to create a predicted social grade – this is the ASG for each household. 

The UKSA recommendation to retain questionnaire-based censuses in 2031 was particularly important for ASG, because most of its predictor variables are not available from administrative sources and can only be captured by the traditional census approach. 

The ONS has established a Census Taskforce to focus on delivering an England and Wales 2031 census that builds on the successes of 2021, working with devolved governments to support coherent UK outputs and maximising the benefits from their work with administrative data to date. They will launch a public consultation later this year to gather views on topics that users need from a system of population statistics and inform the development of the census questionnaire. 

The MRS CGG is looking forward to continued engagement with the statistical agencies across the UK. We’re excited to be part of the discussions around the future of population and migration statistics in the UK and will continue to voice the importance of the delivery of statistics that allow the production of the ASG. 

• More information about the ASG development can be found here. 

Emma White is the director of data protection and compliance at The Advantage Group International. White has been involved with the MRS Census & GeoDems Group since 2010, taking up the role of chair in 2017