Annual Population Survey

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a combined survey of households in Great Britain. Its purpose is to provide information on key social and socio-economic variables between the 10-yearly censuses, with particular emphasis on providing information relating to small geographical areas.

The APS comprises the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (LFS) (waves one and five for the UK funded by the ONS), plus data from the Annual Local (Area) Labour Force Survey (LLFS) Boosts for Engalnd, Scotland and Wales (funded by DWP, DfES, NAW and the ScotExec) and a further sample boost, the APS Boost collected between January 2004 to December 2005 and for England only, funded by the ONS. The APS Boost was discontinued in January 2006 due to withdrawal of ONS funding so is only present in the 5 datasets released between June 2005 and June 2006.

The previous best source for local area data, the Annual Local Area Labour Force Survey (ALALFS) did not include the APS Boost and aimed at achieving a minimum number of 850 economically active people in the sample in each Local Education Authority in England and in each Unitary Authority in Wales and Scotland.

The APS including the APS Boost aimed to ensure that a sample of at least 510 economically active persons in English Local Authority Districts (except London Boroughs where the target is 450 economically active persons) was achieved. The size of the total APS sample was approximately 500,000 people. With the withdrawal of the APS Boost the APS is in essence the ALALFS again and the sample is about 375,000. However, due to the fact some datasets in the time series still include APS Boost data and several additional geographies are included in the APS datasets but not in earlier ALALFS datasets the name of the survey has remained as the APS.

Local area labour market data previously published from the ALALFS is now published from the APS. Other data from the APS is also published on the Neighbourhood Statistics website.

The first publication of APS data was July 2005, which included data relating to January to December 2004. Subsequently, APS data has been published on a quarterly basis, but with each publication covering a year's data. For example, data relating to April 2004 to March 2005 was published in September 2005, whereas data relating to July 2004 to June 2005 was published in December 2005.

The main dissemination route for labour market data from the APS is Nomis®. Other data from the APS, for example, on housing, education, employment, ethnicity and health is available from the Neighbourhood Statistics and National Statistics websites. Datasets are also available at the UK Data Archive and from the LFS Customer Service (SOS) team in the ONS.

This page last revised: Wednesday, 12 July 2006