Census.ac.uk, home of the ESRC Census Programme, provides a one-stop gateway to data and support services allowing researchers in UK higher and further education to access the 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 UK censuses.

These data are held and managed by a number of units across the country, which also provide other significant data and support of value to researchers using census data. The team at the UK Data Archive provides a user support service, registration and authentication services and maintains the programme's website. It also organises outreach, including user workshops.

The data are made available to members of the academic community within the UK for the purposes of not-for-profit research or teaching or personal educational development, as set out in the End User Licence, which must be accepted by users before access is allowed to the vast majority of the data. Some data, of a more sensitive nature, are only made available for research after a rigorous application process via one of the Programme's units dealing with longitudinal studies.

The Programme covers the full range of census data including:

• aggregate data (Area statistics) for 1971 to 2001
• National Statistics Postcode Directory
• Experian demographic data
• digitised boundary datasets for 1971 to 2001
• interaction data (migration and commuting data) for 1981 to 2001
• longitudinal data for England and Wales linked across the censuses from 1971 to 2001, along with related vital events information
• longitudinal data for Scotland linked across the censuses from 1991 to 2001, along with related vital events and health information
• longitudinal data for Northern Ireland is provided by the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study, based on 2001 census data linked with birth and death registrations and demographic data derived from health registrations

Data are available free to academics via agreements with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Office for National Statistics (ONS), General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) and Ordnance Survey (OS).
In due course it is anticipated that data from the census scheduled for 2011 will also be incorporated.

Archive contribution

The Census team at the UK Data Archive designed the web portal, the home of the Census Programme, which is based at Essex. The team have collected metadata from the various Data Support Units to provide searchable access to the census data and deliver a programme of workshops and materials to promote the use of the portal and census resources.

Principal investigator:  Matthew Woollard
Funder: ESRC, JISC
Dates: January 2006
Contact:  Census.ac.uk help desk
Links:  Census.ac.uk