The ten-yearly census aims to collect information about everyone who is resident on census night, the last of which was March 21, 2021, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a year later (March 20, 2022) in Scotland, where it had been delayed due to COVID-19. It is this ambition to collect data about the complete population that makes the census so unique, unparalleled by much smaller social surveys.
The data collected in this way is crucial to