30 May 2004
The Census Dissemination Unit (CDU) at MIMAS, based within the University of Manchester is pleased to announce the release of the Census Aggregate Statistics component of the aggregate outputs from the 2001 UK Census for England and Wales through its Casweb interface at http://census.ac.uk/casweb.
The Census Aggregate Statistics dataset provides information on topics that are roughly equivalent to those covered in the Standard Tables dataset. It is available for smaller geographical areas than the Standard Tables - down to output areas, the smallest units of 2001 Census geography. However, as a trade-off in order to protect the confidentiality of personal information, the information is less detailed, containing fewer and coarser categorisations. In terms of data volume, it is the largest of the 2001 Census datasets, containing approximately 2 billion individual items of data. The release of this data has been subject to several delays, and has only been made possible following extensive work on the preparation and quality assurance of data received from the UK census agencies.
N.B. Please note that the release of Census Aggregate Statistics tables 15, 62, 64, 65 and 133 has been postponed pending the resolution of concerns over data quality with, and the re-supply of corrected data from the Office for National Statistics.
It is intended to follow this release with other components of the aggregate outputs from the 2001 Census for the entire UK as quickly as the processing and quality assurance of the data will allow. A release schedule is available at http://cdu.mimas.ac.uk/schedule.htm. Digital boundary data from the 2001 Census will be incorporated into Casweb and made available to users following the release of numerical outputs. Further information on outputs from the 2001 UK Census can be obtained from the census pages of the websites of the national statistical agencies:
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/default.asp
The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/grosweb/grosweb.nsf/pages/censushm
The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) http://www.nisranew.nisra.gov.uk/census/start.html
Casweb is available using Athens authentication to all members and affiliates of UK Higher and Further Education institutions. It aims to meet their specific requirements by providing:
* An easy-to-use interface that enables users with varying levels of
skill and experience to understand and make selections from the available
census data by guiding them through a series of simple steps.
* Integrated access to census data for the whole UK, and from a series
of recent UK Censuses.
* Updated access to corrected or re-supplied data as soon as it becomes
available.
* Numerical census data combined with corresponding digital boundary
data in a range of standard GIS formats
* The ability to quickly download large subsets of census data, together
with accompanying metadata, in a range of formats suitable for upload
into most kinds of analytical software for further analysis.
This unique combination of facilities is not available from any other currently available online interface to UK Census data.
We have endeavoured to provide access to this data through Casweb as quickly as has been possible. As a result, please note that aspects of the 2001 Census elements of the Casweb interface are still under development, and may be subject to change.
Please direct any comments or queries about Casweb or other aspects of CDU services to:
MIMAS Census Helpdesk
E-mail - census@mimas.ac.uk
Telephone - 0161 275 6109
Details of all Census Dissemination Unit services can be found on the CDU website at http://census.ac.uk/cdu.
Information about the Athens authentication system is available from the Census Registration Service website at http://census.data-archive.ac.uk.
Information about the full range of census-related resources available as part of the ESRC/JISC 2001 Census of Population Programme can be found at http://census.ac.uk.
