User Consultation: Advisory Groups Meetings - May and June 2003
Summary of issues and topics covered at the round of Census Advisory Group meetings held during May and June 2003. The groups involved - the Departmental Working Group, Central and Local Government Information Partnership: Census Sub-Group, Health Service Advisory Group, Academic Advisory Group, and Business Advisory Group - cover central government, local government, the health service, the academic community, and the business sector respectively.
A presentation of the findings from the consultation workshop held in March was given. The next steps will be further detailed research on the alternative options to a future traditional census; such as a Rolling census, administrative sources or a combination of a headcount, surveys and administrative sources.
It was noted that formal consultation would need to take place over a 3-month period and members were asked for their views on delaying such formal consultation until the detailed research had been carried out in 2-3 years time. Members agreed to this. However users will be consulted again soon with detailed proposals for the way forward and the research needed, and a workshop to this end is being arranged for 23 October.
Feedback from user consultation had shown that the proposal for a new layered geography for Neighbourhood Statistics had been welcomed. The layers have the working title of Super Output Areas and will form a core geography for the collection and output of Neighbourhood Statistics. The smallest zones of the new geography would be the 2001 Census Output Area and the largest would be local authority districts. They will be durable and frozen, at least in the short term in order to provide a consistent geography for readily measuring change. A major concern among users is the relationship of the proposed Super Output Areas to wards.
An earlier paper in November 2002 outlined that the aim of the Multi-Source Topic Reports was to draw on the more detailed information available from the 2001 Census together with output from a range of other sources to provide a more comprehensive statistical picture of particular topic areas than would be provided by solely Census-based products. It was pointed out at the meeting that Multi-Source Topic Reports was a working title and that a generic name for the series of reports was being sought; suggestions were encouraged from members.
The aim is for short overviews for most topics to be published on the web from September 2003, with more detailed focus-style reports following over the period late 2003-2005.
There had been discussion at the previous round of advisory groups meetings about the possible expansion of membership and remit of groups to include small area statistics. Generally it had been intended to have revised Terms of Reference at the meeting but as a result of the recent major re-organisation within ONS it has been decided, with the agreement of the Neighbourhood Statistics (NeSS) area, that for the short-term the groups will continue as they are. A chart showing the new ONS organisation is now available on the website HERE.
Any other business
Advance notification was given of a plan to hold a joint ONS/RSS Conference and this has now been arranged for 11-12 November 2003 at the Congress Centre. Further details are available HERE.
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