Industry baulks at plan to axe Census

Proposals to scrap the Census – a move which has been on the cards for nearly a decade – could have serious implications for the direct marketing industry, despite the rise of so-called “big data”, according to experts.
Launched in 1801 under the Tory government of William Pitt the Younger, the main criticism of the Census has been its cost. In 2011, it set the taxpayer back £480m and employed 35,000 people.
Now a consultation by the Office for National Statistics will outline two options for replacing it. According to a report in the Financial Times, experts such as statisticians, demographers and historians have been asked whether they prefer to replace the Census with either an online survey or a group of data sources such as health and education records. But experts doubt whether either option will provide the same level of detail; online surveys are notoriously unresponsive, while government data-sets are notoriously unreliable.
The FT quotes Sir Ian Diamond, vice-chancellor of the University of Aberdeen and a former chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). He said: “Not many administrative sources collect the same richness of information. We need to be convinced that you can get the granular data at the same level [through one of the other methods]; I’m not sure at the moment that can be done.”
Census statistics are used to allocate public money for local services including education, housing, transport and health. Over £100bn per year of public money is distributed nationally using population estimates.
Marketers have to wait at least two years until they get their hands on the Census data and some claim the information is then out of date. But for companies such as Experian, Acxiom, Callcredit and Equifax, the Census provides crucial data on consumer trends and demographics, as well as social information, and forms the basis of many new products.
Commenting on LinkedIn, chief executive of The Data Agency Mark Roy said: “We have this debate roughly every 10 years. Is it outmoded, probably. Is it expensive, definitely. Is it valuable, without doubt. Could we do without it? Analysts will kill themselves!”