Dear Ed, 

Thank you for your letter dated 3 April regarding your review of fraud and computer misuse statistics for England and Wales. I would like to thank your team for their positive engagement throughout the process.  

The ONS Centre for Crime and Justice is committed to improving insights into fraud and computer misuse statistics for England and Wales. The review has outlined concerns about some aspects of the quality of the Action Fraud data and we welcome the accompanying recommendations for improving the quality of these statistics. This includes several recommendations for ONS, including expanding our published information on quality; working with the Home Office and the City of London Police to understand the impact of the new fraud recording system on the quality of the data and statistics; and clarifying the definition of ‘police recorded fraud’. 

We will work closely with data providers to develop a joint action plan for addressing these recommendations. We will aim to publish this by the end of 2025.  

We look forward to continuing to work with you and your team as we draft this action plan and implement these improvements. 

Yours sincerely,  

Jen Woolford 

Director of Public Policy Analysis, Office for National Statistics