What the census provides

In addition to the key purpose of updating population estimates, census outputs provide information that is not available from other surveys. These outputs include:

• Statistics for very small areas: As well as enabling comparisons at a very local level, these can be combined to provide information for larger non-standard areas, including ad-hoc, user-defined geographies
• multivariate data: Using the combination of different variables to look at the relationships between them and providing information about subgroups of the population
• origin-destination (flow) data: Showing the movement of people from one location to another, with four location types included. These relate to migration, travel to work, second addresses and student residences
• alternative populations: Providing geographical breakdowns that are not residence-based. These include populations based on workplaces, workday location, second addresses and out-of-term residences
• detailed migration data: Providing insights into the characteristics of people who have migrated.

Census topics

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released data and analysis for a range of topics. The data includes information at geographies from national down to small area level. 

The topics can be grouped into six topic areas: 

• Population: Age, sex, household size and composition, marital status, living arrangements, nationality, and country of birth
• Education: Highest level of qualification, full-time study 
• Health: General health, disability, and provision of unpaid care
• Housing: Accommodation type, tenure, car ownership, second addresses, overcrowding and under-occupation
• Identity: Ethnic group, national identity, religion, main language, sexual orientation, and gender identity
• Work: Economic activity status, employment history, occupation, industry, hours worked, and travel to work

The North East Evidence Hub includes pages highlighting how some of these statistics portray our area, accessed via the links below:

Additional information

The ONS has produced hundreds of publications relating to the census. These include topic-based statistical bulletins, articles, information about methodology and responses to queries from data users.

The ONS nomis website enables census datasets to be downloaded flexibly, so that, for example, users can focus on specific areas. The ONS custom dataset tool also provides an interactive method of extracting selected census information.

A key output of the census is small area information, so the ONS custom area profile tool is important for users who wish to find out information about their locality. It also includes the useful function that builds up an ad-hoc geographical area from smaller areas and displays data for that. The ONS census maps page provides an opportunity to view geographical patterns and examples of maps can be viewed in the final section of this webpage.

A blog post added to the evidence hub in February 2023 set out why the census is an important data source for understanding the North East.

Maps of the census data

The ONS interactive map shown below allows users to view geographical patterns in census datasets. The variable and topic can be changed to view the full range of published census data. The zoom function can be used to view patterns for small areas in most datasets.

For more information about this mapping tool, visit the ONS website.