Dear Ed,
Personal Well-being in the UK release
The Office for National Statistics developed questions on personal well-being in 2011 asking respondents how satisfied they are with their life, whether they think the things they do in life are worthwhile, how happy they were yesterday and how anxious they were yesterday.
We currently publish personal well-being estimates, sourced from the Annual Population Survey (APS) in two publications:
- “Personal Well-being in the UK”, a bulletin presenting estimates for each local authority in the UK, alongside estimates for selected socio-demographic characteristics.
- “UK Measures of National Well-being”, a dashboard presenting societal progress measures in the UK, including estimates of personal well-being by UK country, English region, age and sex.
Following on from Mike Keoghan’s letter (dated 9 October 2024) outlining ONS’ plans to de-designate the Annual Population Survey (APS), I am writing to inform you we intend to pause this years’ publication of “Personal Well-being in the UK”. This release has been an accredited official statistic since 2014.
We have made this decision as the publications primary purpose is to provide more granular estimates of personal well-being which we aren’t currently able to provide from the APS.
We intend this to be a temporary pause, and we will continue to engage with ONS’ Social Survey teams to support a recovered sample allowing us to reinstate this publication in the future.
We have spoken with our key stakeholders, including central government departments and the devolved administrations to understand the impact of this pause. There have been limited concerns with our approach and we have agreed to work with stakeholders on an approach to fill the series gap when more data becomes available.
We will inform users of the pause, and will clearly mark our publication, data tables and user guidance.
During this pause, we intend to continue publishing our personal well-being estimates at a UK, country and regional level as part of the UK Measures of National Well-being.
Yours sincerely,
Grant Fitzner