IT will soon be time for us all to be counted.

The 10-yearly population census will take place on Sunday, April 29, and every household in the country -- an estimated 24 million -- will be expected to complete a form on or around that day.

Failure to do so could cost £1,000, a penalty severe enough to concentrate most minds, we would suggest.

Here in Bolton the forms will start to be hand-delivered by trained enumerators from Monday.

The Foot and Mouth crisis might have delayed the local (and general?) elections, but the Census goes on.

Mr John McKenzie, the Census Area Manager for Bolton, is upbeat about the expected local reaction.

He thinks 70 per cent of people will post the forms back after answering the 40 questions and thirty per cent will need reminding through a visit from an enumerator.

Those Bolton people who refuse to participate, he believes, will be countable on one hand.

Let's hope he is right.

Governments have a difficult enough time planning for the future and surveys like this have been invaluable over the last 200 years.

We are told that the information gathered will be used to allocate more than £50 billion of national public spending each year.

It will help governments decide on cash for the provision of services such as schools, hospitals, day centres, roads and buses.

An expensive exercise like this needs to go smoothly and be well-supported if future decisions are to be the right ones.

There will be those, of course, who will regard it with great suspicion and not be entirely convinced by assurances from the Office for National Statistics that the census is not about "snooping."

But at this stage there is little to be done other than believe them when they say no other government department gets to see the forms.

We note, by the way, that all the information is due to be scanned directly into a computer.

As we all know, computers are wonderful when they work and less so when they throw a wobbly.

It is to be hoped that the equipment is up to scratch and that everything is completed successfully without any embarrassing problems similar to those which caused passport chaos not so long ago.

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