Demographic figures depend not only on who will identify themselves, but on whom the statisticians are prepared to count! In Eastern Europe poor, dark-skinned residents of Gypsy ghettos are more likely to be counted than nomads or light-skinned businessmen, while in England, until the 1980s only nomads living in tents or caravans were counted. Not until 2011 did the UK's Census include an ethnic question, inviting individuals to identify as ‘Gypsies or Travellers’, and about 58,000 did so, 24% of them living in caravans (ONS, 2014). Only 12% were born outside the UK, and it is probable that most of these were born in the Irish Republic. It is understandable that very few of the East European Roma who have migrated here since 1989 would have identified themselves, since most regard the word ‘Gypsy’ as a bad term. Although we are aware of small numbers of intermarriages between Roma and Romanichals over the past century, it is probably wisest to make separate estimates of ‘Roma’ and the numbers of ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ (that is, Romanichals, Kale, Nachins, Minceir, Pavees and caravan-dwelling New Travellers).

The only recent serious attempt to work from the Census and other public data to make a minimum estimate of the number of Gypsies and Travellers in England is that of the then Irish Traveller Movement (2013). It compared the Census with the numbers revealed by local authority Gypsy and Travellers Accommodation Assessments (GTAAs), which in turn take into account the Department for Communities and Local Government biannual caravan counts. Both of these were likely to undercount a little, since they could be used to help determine local authorities’ site provision. The English local authority biannual caravan counts have been going since 1979, rising from 8,000 caravans to around 21,000, a growth that reflects both an increasingly reliable methodology and a clear natural population growth. In principle, the forward-looking GTAAs, developed as part of the last Labour government's regional planning strategies, sought to count all those living in caravans now or recently, or possibly desirous of living in caravans.