This table provides information about the ethnic group of the usual resident population of United Kingdom as at census day, 27 March 2011.

The ethnic group classification presented in this table is the recommended framework from the 'Harmonised Concepts and Questions for Social Data Sources Primary Standards' for presentation of UK outputs on ethnic group. See 'Ethnic Group Mapping' tab for the correspondence between UK classification and the country specific ethnic group classifications for which data was collected by each UK country.

The category 'White' could include Polish responses from the country specific question for Scotland which would have been outputted to ‘Other White’ and then included under ‘White’ for UK (also see (3) for issue with Gypsy, Traveller and Irish Traveller). ‘White Africans’ may also have been recorded under ‘Other White’ and then included under ‘White’ for UK.

For Northern Ireland, ‘Irish Traveller' is collected under its own ethnic group.

There are differences in data collection across the UK for ‘Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Traveller’, which make it difficult to produce a UK estimate. Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Traveller is collected in England and Wales and ‘Gypsy/Traveller’ is collected in Scotland and they are both output under ‘White’. However, if there is a need to show a UK output for, 'Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Traveller'(and the numbers are not small or disclosive,) the responses from the GB questions can be combined with the responses from the 'Irish Traveller' category from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's framework for monitoring minority ethnic and migrant people' published by the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister in July 2011 recommends that Roma is categorised under 'Other' ethnic group. This is because there is a distinct category for Irish Travellers, who by law (Race Relations Order) are categorised as an ethnic group in their own right. Roma is not a subset of the Irish Traveller group and the need is to have accurate data on both Roma and on Irish Travellers).

'Mixed / Multiple Ethnic Groups' isn’t broken down for the country specific question for Scotland.

Differences in the terminology and data collection of the country specific Scotland question make these categories difficult to compare. The ‘African’ category in the Scottish question is presented in a separate section to the ‘Caribbean’ or ‘Black’ category, however, under the harmonised output these two categories are output as part of Black/African/Caribbean/Black British’. The African categories used in Scotland could potentially capture‘White/Asian/Other African’ in addition to ‘Black’ identities.

In order to protect against disclosure of personal information from the 2011 Census, there has been swapping of records in the Census database between different geographic areas, and so some counts will be affected. In the main, the greatest effects will be at the lowest geographies, since the record swapping is targeted towards those households with unusual characteristics in small areas.

More details on the ONS Census disclosure control strategy may be found on the Statistical Disclosure Control page on the ONS web site.