Title

London boroughs have lost £130m in grant, due to errors in population statistics, London Councils has claimed. The association is continuing its fight to rectify the census figures for 2001, which estimated the population in the capital at more than 100,000 lower than all previous projections. As a result of the cut in population figures, London has lost £130m in undampened grant for 2008/09-2010/11 – putting further strain on the boroughs' already-stretched resources. London Councils has relaunched its campaign after the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – which is responsible for the census data – issued a survey which revealed the public was sceptical about its figures. According to the ONS, 36% of the public felt official figures were accurate, while 33% disagreed. The remaining 31% did not know. However, the public were more sceptical about political interference in the figures than they were about errors. Chairman of London Councils, Merrick Cockell, said: ‘Population figures are central to the way funding is allocated to councils. Their current inaccuracy is causing a devastating loss in funding for council services and unfairly penalising the capital, which is hardest hit by these inaccurate figures.' Cllr Cockell said the association wanted to ‘work closely with central government' to improve the statistics and ‘combat this growing mistrust'. The ONS survey is in stark contrast to a survey of local authority chief executives, carried out last October, which showed widespread concern about the data (see The MJ, 25 October 2007). Nine out of 10 chief executives claimed they felt the Government had not acted quickly enough to amend the census details in the survey, carried out by Slough BC.

Title

WHITEHALL

'Inaccurate' census data costs boroughs £130m

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING