Dear June

Assessment of Statistics on Road Freight

Thank you for the correspondence outlining the actions that have been taken to address the requirements in Assessment Report number 327: Statistics on Road Freight.

On behalf of the Board of the Statistics Authority, I have reviewed these on the advice of the Assessment team and I am pleased to confirm the designation of Domestic Road Freight and International Road Freight as National Statistics. We will reflect the re-designation of these statistics on our Register of De-designations.

I welcome the commitment and responsiveness of the team to increasing the trust in and value of these statistics, particularly with the additional publication of quarterly data and the further improvements to the statistical presentation. I also welcome the approach taken to explaining the quality assurance arrangements of the administrative data used in producing the road freight statistics. We plan to prepare a case study for our ‘QAAD’ web pages using these information notes as an example of writing for users and providing straightforward explanations of quality issues.

National Statistics status means that official statistics meet the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and value and is something to be celebrated. We invite you to include a statement alongside the statistics which reflects the National Statistics status. You may wish to base your statement on the boilerplate text included in the assessment report.

Please feel free to discuss any aspect of this with us at any time. I am copying this letter to John Pullinger, the National Statistician, and to Paul McEvoy in DfT.

Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson