David Freeman to Siobhan Tuohy-Smith: Compliance review of ONS Gender pay gap statistics

Published:

Sent from: Office for National Statistics

Sent to: Office for Statistics Regulation

Download correspondence (127 KB)

Dear Siobhan

Compliance review of ONS Gender pay gap statistics

Thank you for your review of ONS gender pay gap statistics and for the constructive engagement of your team throughout the process.

We welcome the report’s recognition of both the strengths of the statistics, which is highly regarded in informing public debate and policymaking, as well as your recommendations in identifying additional improvements in our approach to publication.

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, we already make available a wide range of supporting data and information to help users understand the appropriate use and interpretation of such important statistics, including how they differ from other gender pay gap data, for example those available via the UK Government Gender pay gap service.

We will look at reviewing the Gender Pay gap bulletin commentary as part of our next release to be published on 22 October 2026. In particular, we will aim to strengthen the explanation of what the measure does and does not show and improve the signposting of relevant quality and interpretative information. We will also consider what additional information we can provide on the data used to derive the statistics, including how the breakdowns for men and women are derived.

The review also identifies broader opportunities to improve accessibility and coherence of the quality and methodological information that we publish alongside the gender pay gap statistics. This is an important area that extends beyond the commentary of a single bulletin.

We already have plans to review such supporting materials to reflect recent changes to ASHE data collection and processing; this work will be completed after the October 2026 release. As OSR has commenced a compliance review of ONS’s earnings statistics sourced from ASHE, we expect further opportunities for improvement may be identified through this process. As such we will consider all relevant recommendations together and implement changes in a coherent and consistent way across the ASHE earnings publications, avoiding successive or potentially inconsistent updates to closely related material that could cause confusion for users.

We will continue to engage closely with users throughout, using established channels such as our Earnings User Group, which will next meet in November, and our upcoming Earnings Symposium in January. We will seek additional feedback on users’ understanding of the gender pay gap statistics, and where they most need interpretative and quality information. We will use that evidence, alongside the findings from the wider ASHE review and other established feedback channels, to inform the subsequent improvements.

We also welcome the opportunity for further discussion with OSR on the wider gender pay gap landscape and the challenges of ensuring users can understand and compare the different measures available.

Thank you again for the review. We look forward to continuing to work with you and we will provide an update on our progress to meet your recommendations by January 2027.

Yours sincerely,

David Freeman

Compliance review of Gender pay gap statistics

Siobhan Tuohy-Smith to David Freeman: Compliance review of ONS Gender pay gap statistics