Dear Victoria

Seasonal flu vaccine uptake statistics

Thank you for your correspondence requesting an exemption to the release time practice. When deciding the best time to release statistics we believe that the impact on serving the public good should be carefully considered. You have told us that this change will allow adequate time for quality assurance and so improve the statistics. You have also told us that you will alert your users to the planned changes to the release times on the gov.uk release calendar.

We consider that aligning the release times of all three sets of flu vaccine uptake statistics will reduce user confusion. I am happy to confirm exemption from the Code of Practice for Statistics’ standard publication time of 9.30am to permit a later release time of 2:00pm.

This relates to the following sets of statistics:

• Seasonal flu vaccine uptake in children of school age
• Seasonal flu and COVID-19 uptake in frontline healthcare workers
• Seasonal flu vaccine uptake in GP patients

I welcome your team’s ongoing endeavours to provide information during the current COVID-19 pandemic to allow reasoned debate and decision-making to inform society.

Yours sincerely

Ed Humpherson

Director General for Regulation