Census 'unfit For Purpose'

摘要

Britain's census is not fit for purpose and should be urgently updated, the New Local Government Network has warned. The national population survey is used to calculate the allocation of ￡100bn of public cash to councils and primary care trusts. The next census, due in 2011, will be outdated and insufficiently detailed, wasting the ￡500m to be spent on collating it, the local government think-tank claims in its latest report, Local counts: The future of the census. The NLGN report proposes that Britain follow the example of the Netherlands, where administrative databases are used to provide an updatable, 'rolling' register, rather than a one-off census which is out-of-date as soon as it is published.