When Will I Be Able To Search For My Ancestors In The UK 1911 Census?

This census, like all census records, is subject to a one hundred year privacy rule and so access was not expected to be available until 2012. However, family historians have been challenging this and arguing that there should be more freedom of information. As a result, the Information Commisisoner in the UK has reviewed the situation and, if you pay £45, you can apply to the National Archives at Kew to extract a single record from the 1911 census now.

Plans are also well advanced to digitize and transcribe and index the census and its release date  has been brought forward to sometime in 2009. When exactly is not yet known because this is a mammoth task and undertaking that will take many months to complete.

There is likely to be just as much excitement about the release, when it does come, as there was at the start of 2002, when the 1901 census was released. The site was overwhelmed  by visitors and had to be redone with an increase in servers to cope with demand.