Dear Alex, Jen

We previously set out an intention to undertake further regulatory work on response issues impacting household surveys used across the statistics landscape. To start this work, we plan to undertake a review of Household total wealth in Great Britain – the latest statistics from the Wealth and Assets Survey – of compliance against key elements of the Code of Practice for Statistics.

We expect that the review will cover the following:

  • The quality of the survey data due to declining response rates, any impact this may have on potential biases, and any further actions to improve data quality
  • The clarity of communication with users around ongoing data quality concerns
  • The extent to which these statistics meet user need

Given the 2-year survey design and resulting lag between data collection and reporting of results, we will also consider how survey response is performing in more recent data and the steps ONS is taking to ensure quality.

To assist our review, we would like to request any additional quality assurance material prepared in advance of your recent publication that you think would be helpful by 5th February.

Following this, our next piece of planned regulatory work will focus on data and outputs using the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF).

We intend to share initial findings by the end of February and my team will be in touch to discuss in further detail.

Yours sincerely

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR

Letter from Alex Lambert & Jen Woolford to Ed Humpherson: Review of household total wealth in Great Britain