Scotland’s botched census is facing further trouble after it emerged organisers are scrambling to secure the services of hundreds of key staff who are due to leave during its month-long extension.
Workers on fixed-term contracts have been offered renewed deals in an attempt to cope with the push for more people to complete the forms. Experts have said that present sign-up rates will render the research worthless.
The original deadline for census returns was Sunday and there are fears that many employees whose contracts were ending in line with that date will have already made plans for alternative employment.
The month-long extension to the deadline will cost £10 million and was announced by Angus Robertson, the SNP’s constitution secretary, on Thursday, with 23 per cent of households having failed to fill in the forms despite the threat of a £1,000 fine for non-compliance. As of yesterday 550,000 households had not submitted their return.
Critics have blamed the debacle on the Scottish government’s decision to “decouple” Scotland’s £138 million census from the rest of the UK, where it was carried out successfully last year. Scotland would then have benefited from the UK-wide publicity that was taking place.
Allowing people in Scotland to self-identify their gender in the survey has also been blamed by some for the lack of response. Others claimed that a question asking the public whether they speak Scots was confusing.
Sarah Boyack, Labour’s spokeswoman on the constitution, said she had been told staff have struggled with IT problems and that people who were brought in to analyse data have ended up being dispatched to collect information.
“It just feels like a crisis on the ground,” she said. “There are lessons that could have been learnt from England, which was primarily digital and got 97 per cent [return rate]. What has gone wrong in Scotland?”
A target of 94 per cent for overall completion had originally been set in Scotland, with every council area expected to achieve at least 85 per cent.
Professor David Martin, a deputy director at the publicly funded UK Data Service, which collates economic, social and population figures, said that the extra time would not make much difference if people had already decided not to respond.
He said that “the ramifications are really pretty big if they can’t rescue it” with local authorities potentially missing out on funding because of inaccurate data about the number of vulnerable people.
The Daily Telegraph previously reported that 1,250 field staff were hired for this Scottish census compared with 7,000 in 2011. It had originally been said that between 3,000 and 4,000 workers would be taken on to carry out home visits. It has also emerged that posts published by official census social media channels on Sunday evening and still live on Monday morning informed Scots that “you only have until May 1 to fill it in”, reflecting the previous deadline.
Donald Cameron, the Scottish Conservative spokesman on the constitution, said: “The census debacle turns into more and more of an SNP shambles by the day.
“We’ve had the inadequate publicity drive which led to the extension of the deadline, then we had the social media posts going out with the old deadline on them, and now it appears efforts to belatedly improve public participation rates are being hampered by a desperate scramble to retain sufficient staff.
“The SNP government couldn’t have made a bigger mess of this if they tried — and it all stems from their refusal to keep the Scottish census in sync with that of the other home nations, as the Scottish Conservatives urged them to.”
National Records of Scotland said that more than one million visits to homes had been undertaken by its “field force” team. A spokeswoman said: “Field force contracts have not yet expired, all staff have been offered a renewal of their contract to cover the continued period.”
The Scottish government was asked to comment.
After announcing the delay last week Robertson was ridiculed by some for suggesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was partly to blame. He told MSPs the 77.2 per cent response rate was “a substantial figure” when “everything happening in the world right now” was taken into consideration.
I expect the other missteps had an effect but this looks like the main one.
>The Daily Telegraph previously reported that 1,250 field staff were hired for this Scottish census compared with 7,000 in 2011. It had originally been said that between 3,000 and 4,000 workers would be taken on to carry out home visits.
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Scotland’s botched census is facing further trouble after it emerged organisers are scrambling to secure the services of hundreds of key staff who are due to leave during its month-long extension.
Workers on fixed-term contracts have been offered renewed deals in an attempt to cope with the push for more people to complete the forms. Experts have said that present sign-up rates will render the research worthless.
The original deadline for census returns was Sunday and there are fears that many employees whose contracts were ending in line with that date will have already made plans for alternative employment.
The month-long extension to the deadline will cost £10 million and was announced by Angus Robertson, the SNP’s constitution secretary, on Thursday, with 23 per cent of households having failed to fill in the forms despite the threat of a £1,000 fine for non-compliance. As of yesterday 550,000 households had not submitted their return.
Critics have blamed the debacle on the Scottish government’s decision to “decouple” Scotland’s £138 million census from the rest of the UK, where it was carried out successfully last year. Scotland would then have benefited from the UK-wide publicity that was taking place.
Allowing people in Scotland to self-identify their gender in the survey has also been blamed by some for the lack of response. Others claimed that a question asking the public whether they speak Scots was confusing.
Sarah Boyack, Labour’s spokeswoman on the constitution, said she had been told staff have struggled with IT problems and that people who were brought in to analyse data have ended up being dispatched to collect information.
“It just feels like a crisis on the ground,” she said. “There are lessons that could have been learnt from England, which was primarily digital and got 97 per cent [return rate]. What has gone wrong in Scotland?”
A target of 94 per cent for overall completion had originally been set in Scotland, with every council area expected to achieve at least 85 per cent.
Professor David Martin, a deputy director at the publicly funded UK Data Service, which collates economic, social and population figures, said that the extra time would not make much difference if people had already decided not to respond.
He said that “the ramifications are really pretty big if they can’t rescue it” with local authorities potentially missing out on funding because of inaccurate data about the number of vulnerable people.
The Daily Telegraph previously reported that 1,250 field staff were hired for this Scottish census compared with 7,000 in 2011. It had originally been said that between 3,000 and 4,000 workers would be taken on to carry out home visits. It has also emerged that posts published by official census social media channels on Sunday evening and still live on Monday morning informed Scots that “you only have until May 1 to fill it in”, reflecting the previous deadline.
Donald Cameron, the Scottish Conservative spokesman on the constitution, said: “The census debacle turns into more and more of an SNP shambles by the day.
“We’ve had the inadequate publicity drive which led to the extension of the deadline, then we had the social media posts going out with the old deadline on them, and now it appears efforts to belatedly improve public participation rates are being hampered by a desperate scramble to retain sufficient staff.
“The SNP government couldn’t have made a bigger mess of this if they tried — and it all stems from their refusal to keep the Scottish census in sync with that of the other home nations, as the Scottish Conservatives urged them to.”
National Records of Scotland said that more than one million visits to homes had been undertaken by its “field force” team. A spokeswoman said: “Field force contracts have not yet expired, all staff have been offered a renewal of their contract to cover the continued period.”
The Scottish government was asked to comment.
After announcing the delay last week Robertson was ridiculed by some for suggesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was partly to blame. He told MSPs the 77.2 per cent response rate was “a substantial figure” when “everything happening in the world right now” was taken into consideration.
I expect the other missteps had an effect but this looks like the main one.
>The Daily Telegraph previously reported that 1,250 field staff were hired for this Scottish census compared with 7,000 in 2011. It had originally been said that between 3,000 and 4,000 workers would be taken on to carry out home visits.
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