Wish I had paid more attention to geography classes when I was at school – or at least, the lessons we had on demography. I had no idea when I became a council leader that I would have to become such an expert in population studies. In almost 20 years as a councillor, I am used to scrapping over grant settlements. I bear the scars of battles over grant formulae which, at various times, have moved Revenue Support Grant monies away from and towards London, and between inner-urban and other parts of the UK. Other than a small handful of civil servants, the rest of us lack the basic tools to understand how the system works. No wonder the LGA has proposed an independent commission to take charge of the distribution formula. But the one aspect of funding we never contested was population data – the numbers to be plugged into those all-important formulae. And that's about to change. This is because the UK population is now seeing unprecedented levels of mobility and migration. A new LSE report, commissioned by London Councils, highlighted the costs and impacts of population churn in London. And the ability of the Office of National Statistics to track population movements is highly questionable. The Polish ambassador has said that official estimates of Polish nationals living in the UK is only half the true number. Yet the costs of planning and providing services clearly depend on having accurate population figures. My own council fought a well-publicised battle to correct under-counting in our 2001 census results. The new three-year grant settlement is likely to show considerable volatility, due to population-related data changes. Perhaps its time to move to a five-yearly census and develop a basket of indicators to determine short-term population changes in between.
