Dear Ed,
Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report
I am writing to request the suspension of the official statistics accreditation for the ‘Activity’ component of the Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report (ASC-FR).
The publication is moving across to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) from NHS England in October 2025. Our intention is to separate the ‘Activity’ and ‘Finance’ aspects, publishing two reports – the ‘Adult Social Care Activity Report’ as official statistics in development, with the ‘Adult Social Care Finance Report’ remaining as accredited official statistics. These will be published on 23rd October 2025.
As well as transitioning from NHS England to DHSC, the data source for the ‘Activity’ report has changed from the Short and Long Term health collection (SALT) to Client Level Data (CLD). Client Level Data in its current form is still a new and developing data source, only mandated from 2023 onwards. While a small number of aggregated CLD has been published quarterly since March 2024 (as official statistics in development), this will be the first full publication of the activity data that is replacing SALT. We continue to develop our understanding of its strengths, limitations and completeness as we would any new dataset, and at this time we feel that official statistics in development is more appropriate for this release.
Labelling the ‘Finance’ report as accredited official statistics remains appropriate. Its data source is unchanged, and only presentational changes to meet government style and accessibility requirements have been made to the contents of the report.
Throughout this transition, we will continue to ensure we are transparent with users on the reliability of our estimates and what comparisons can and can’t be made with previous publications. We will also ensure appropriate caveats and handling advice are communicated in our publications for users of these statistics.
I would like to thank your team for their advice and support, and we will of course continue to engage with OSR throughout the ongoing transition.
Yours sincerely
Andrea Prophet
Deputy Director, Statistics & Data Science and Head of Profession for Statistics