Open consultation

Government Statistical Service Harmonisation: Assessing user needs for additional response options for the new ethnicity harmonisation standard

Summary

At the Government Statistical Service we want your response to this consultation to provide evidence of user need, including community and respondent need, for additional tick boxes within the new ethnicity harmonised standard.

This consultation is being held on another website.

This consultation closes at

Consultation description

This consultation asks your views on whether additional tick-box response options are required for a new ethnicity harmonised standard. It is part of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) Harmonisation team’s ongoing review of this standard. It is taking place alongside the ONS’s consultation on topics for Census 2031, which asks about user needs for ethnic group data alongside many other topics.

The new ethnicity harmonised standard will be recommended for use by data collectors across the GSS, including teams working on the next censuses in the UK. We expect the UK statistics organisations to consider this standard when developing questions. We expect the relevant census question to align to this standard in England and Wales. We will continue to work closely with teams across the UK to understand their requirements for the standard. Depending on the user needs of each UK nation, this may be delivered through a single version or a suite of harmonised questions.

Updates to this page

Published 28 October 2025

Sign up for emails or print this page