Revised census may lift grant allocation

The government has said that it will change council grant
allocations based on revised population figures after a review by
the Office for National Statistics found that the 2001 census
figures, published last year, underestimated the UKpopulation by
180,000.

The ONS will now revise its mid-year estimates for 2002 and the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will recalculate the levels of
grant to which councils are entitled under the local government
finance system.

Inner-city councils are most likely to benefit because the ONS
believes the problems were largely down to the difficulty of
tracking young men living in shared houses in cities. It said the
increase could also partly reflect a rise in immigration.

But Westminster Council, which claims it lost millions of pounds as
a result of the census, said the revised figure for its population
– up 9,000 to 190,000 – still fell “massively short” of its own
estimates.