Council and democracy

What can I do with 2001 census results?

The information presented here is extracted from 2001 Census Prospectus on the National Statistics website.

Access to results.

Access to the main results of the Census is free and use is unrestricted. This is a major change from previous censuses, and reflects wider policies on Government information.

The dissemination of Census results is governed by two parts of the Census Act 1920. Section 2.3 provides central funding in effect making the statistical results free. Section 4 requires Census reports to be made to Parliament and allows further output to be commissioned provided that additional marginal costs are recovered.

Confidentiality.

The protection of the confidentiality of personal Census information is paramount, and disclosure protection measures are used to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of information about identifiable individuals.

Small counts in all tables issued for England and Wales are adjusted. In addition there was swapping of records in the output database, and broad limitations are placed on details in tables to be produced for small populations. There are also minimum thresholds of numbers of person and households for the release of sets of output. These are 40 households and 100 persons for Census Area Statistics, and 400 households and 1,000 people for Standard Tables. More details of disclosure control methods are available on the National Statistics website.

Copyright and licences.

All Census output is Crown copyright. The use of material from reports is subject to the acknowledgement of copyright and source, and licences may be required.

End user licences.

The supply of all Census material in electronic form will be subject to end user licences which grant unrestricted use of the material but with conditions which require

• the acknowledgement of Crown copyright and source
• that the user shall not attempt to derive information about identifiable individuals nor purport to have done so
• that the user is aware of third party rights which apply to some material and any need for licences (this applies particularly in the case of Output Area boundaries in vector form, where there are additional licence conditions).

End user licences will vary somewhat between products, but will include explanatory footnotes.

Re-use and publication.

Any re-use and publication of the copyrighted material must be covered where indicated by a free "core click-use licence" (previously called a "click-use licence") obtained from HMSO as Controller of Crown copyright. The definition of "re-use and publication" is comprehensive and includes use on an intranet and any form of publication to a third party. An organisation may be covered by a single licence which applies for a period of five years.

Re-use and publication of other material must be covered where indicated by specially tailored licences.

For more information about the scheme and to obtain a copy of the "core click-use licence" visit the HMSO website.