The conduct of the decennial census is a colossal undertaking, involving a large temporary workforce and a complex series of contracts and services necessary to ensure that the whole exercise works smoothly. All of these complex (and expensive) systems are already in place for the 2021 enumeration, and although it may be tempting to israel rcs data think that the whole exercise could be put off, that would necessitate a huge waste of public money in a time of austerity – and in many ways from the census is currently greater than ever.
Both Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have rightly focused public attention on official statistics and led to widespread discussion of measures and concepts that would not usually gain so much airtime.
Amid the noise, the high quality ONS Covid infection survey demonstrates the ability of the UK statistical agencies to collect well-designed statistics on key issues which are independent of national politics. Issues of social change, local population characteristics and inequality have moved to the fore of public debate.