Background
The 1971 Census of Population was held on April 25th/26th 1971 (Census night) and the work carried out by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) which is now called the Office for National Statistics. The data was originally supplied for Local Authority Districts (LAs), wards/civil parishes and enumeration districts (EDs). These cover England, Wales and Scotland.
The Ward level data was the only part of the 1971 outputs originally produced in digital form, it was available in punched card format. The 1971 data in Casweb was sourced from the UK Data Archive and made available following processing, restructuring and quality assurance. Where possible corrections to known errors have been incorporated. Some errors and inconsistencies detected during processing have also been corrected.
Getting the Data
To access the 1971 Census data use Casweb, our web interface to census aggregate outputs from the 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses.
The CDU holds the Small Area Statistics (SAS)of the 1971 Census, these are aggregate outputs, generally speaking counts of people or households in various socio-demographic groupings (e.g. age, gender, employment) at country, county, district, ward and enumeration district geographic levels . Details of the content can be found in the '1971 Small Area Statistics' section
Getting Help
In order to answer some of your queries we have put together a number of information pages on aspects of the 1971 Census accessible from the menu at the top of this page, along with a 1971 section in the FAQ that should resolve most questions. However, if you have further queries then please get in touch with us by phone or email, you can find our contact details on the 'Support & Contact' page.
