Dear Mike
Spotlight on Quality Assessment: Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR)
We have completed our quality-focused assessment of ONS’s statistics on the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR). Your team requested an assessment of these statistics following their introduction for Great Britain (GB) in March 2024. PIPR’s development aims to fill a long-standing gap in private rental statistics by providing estimates of private rents at local levels of geography that are comparable over time. PIPR is currently published as ‘official statistics in development’, with Northern Ireland and UK PIPR estimates being developed for publication from March 2025.
The report sets out a series of requirements that will need to be met before the PIPR statistics can be considered for a full assessment of whether they merit accredited official statistics status. We consider that the statistics would benefit from a fuller account of the quality of the source data that PIPR estimates are based on each month and more-detailed and accessible information on PIPR methods. Publishing this information would allow users a more complete understanding of the approaches taken, and support PIPR’s appropriate interpretation by technical and non-technical users. As part of meeting the requirements, it will also be necessary for your statisticians to review PIPR’s suitability with users once UK PIPR estimates are published, as they evaluate PIPR’s ‘in development’ status.
However, our assessment also found that many users see PIPR as an improved series that appears to be more responsive to inflationary changes than the previous Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (IPHRP) series that it is replacing. Additionally, many users told us that they welcomed ONS’s open and engaging approach during PIPR’s development ahead of the estimates’ March 2024 publication. This approach included a series of effective public engagement sessions in Autumn 2023. We commend the team’s proactive engagement approach and encourage ONS to continue to engage in an open and transparent way with the full user community.
We thank you and your team for your positive engagement with us during this assessment. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you would like to discuss any aspects of this letter or the accompanying assessment report.
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR