The Census due for completion next week is out of date already in its failure to ask about the status of those who have entered into civil partnership or who have had foreign partnerships/marriages recognised.

Last year after trialling a question on the issue the Central Statistics Office decided not to ask at all because people were confused. Maybe they didn’t ask the right question. Now the law has been changed (since JULY last year) and people are in legally recognised relationships and are very very confused at the advice they are being given. The CSO are telling people who are in civil partnerships that they should tick the marriage box. This despite everyone knowing that Civil Partnership is not Marrage and same sex marriage obtained abroad not being recognised as marriage here.  This is really stupid and a huge fail on the part of the CSO. (They’ve not done well on the religion/no religion bit either).

GLEN have produced advice to same sex couples on how to ensure their relationship type/status is counted.