The deadline to complete the Scottish census is set to be delayed due to a lack of responses, according to reports. 

As of last weekend, a total of 700,000 households were yet to submit a completed form of the survey which had been already delayed by a year due to the pandemic. 

The Telegraph reports that Constitution, External Affairs and Culture Secretary Angus Robertson will announce a postponement of the May 1 deadline in Holyrood on Thursday.

The Herald:

While the Scottish census was postponed to ensure the "highest possible response rate", in the rest of the UK the once in ten years survey was carried out as planned last year with a 97 per cent response rate. 

Concerns have been raised that a low response rate could compromise the results, which are used when issuing public funds and setting policies.

A spokesperson for National Records of Scotland (NRS) said: “Our focus continues to be on supporting and enabling remaining households to complete their census return by the start of May, adding to the over two million households across Scotland that have already done so.”

Census letters have been issued to more than 2.7 million households in Scotland with those who do not complete it being warned of prosecution and a fine of up to £1000. 

Earlier this week the Herald reported that Glasgow had been lagging behind other council areas in completing the census, with more than a third of households not completing it by May 1.

In November last year, the delay to the survey due to the Covid pandemic caused costs to the NRS to rise by £21.6m against the original estimate of £117m. 

Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, said the cost hike had had a “significant financial impact” on the body responsible for running the census.

The Scottish Government covered the increase in costs. 

Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh, told the Telegraph that delay to the Sunday deadline "raises worrying questions" about the quality of the data. 

He said: "In normal social surveys, there are strict quality controls on the time given to respond. 

“This is because people vary in how they respond, especially for opinion questions such as the several identity questions in the census. For example, how people answer the question about gender identity might vary according to whether some controversy about gender identity is in the news. The same is true of national identity and ethnic identity.”

 “As a social statistician, I would not use census data on identity that had such an arbitrarily varying window of replying.”