TO ASK Have you had a letter addressed to your house from the Office of National Statistics?

[ScousyFogarty]

Not a ddressed to a PERSON but to a house.?

I filled in my CENSUS form ...thought I had seen the back of the Office of National Statistic.

They say its done by lottery; and they want to interview me. Not offering a fee. Dont use my name.

What a funny system. I suspect its voluntary; but they dont really make that clear.

Are you one of the 10 per cent who have received these strange communications? (I can see the funny side of it)

Yup, got one of these.

If you don't want to do it call the number on the letter, or the direct ONS number - 0845 601 3034 - and they'll remove you from their list. Well, that's what I was told, I guess we'll see if the 'interviewer' turns up.

The questions they say they're going to ask are the same as the Census, so I don't see the point...

gently..if the questions are the same as the census. I do not see the point either. It just seems an odd way of doing business. Writing to addresses and not people.

The cencus info isn't public for 100 years. Maybe this is a smaller survey so that they can use the info?

Yes we got one.

The guy came round, spoke to dh for 10 minutes. Job done.

I can't remember if it was just addressed to the house. Were the original census forms addressed that way too?

I had one a few years ago. Guy came round and asked loads of boring questions. Then there's follow up interviews. It ended up being a huge pain. I wouldn't do it again, too time consuming.

I think they probably do it because there isn't a reliable list of who is actually where at a given time; e.g. people don't update Council Tax details immediately. By addressing it to the residents they can ensure people don't just chuck it because it's addressed to someone who doesn't live there anymore.

I haven't but I'd like one!

[I heart statistics emoticon]

I had one too, she asked who lived here, names, ages, occupations, who stayed on the 27th March etc. That was it, took 5 minutes. Couldn't really see the point to be honest, the information was exactly the same as on the original form.

There are two post Census surveys.
One is to get an idea of coverage, how many it actually reached.
The other is to check the quality of information collected from the Census. Which would make sending it to a household, rather than individual, quite reasonable.

I rang them on the free number and asked them not to contact me again

I didnot like the attitude that they were doing me a favour. And that they said they would call and call again if I was not available. That is not booking an appointment