Dear all,

We have recently completed our review of the statistics from the Assessment of Salmon Stocks and Fisheries in England and Wales. This publication is jointly produced by the Environment Agency (EA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). Although these statistics are not labelled as Official Statistics, we agreed to carry out a short review in light of proposed changes to methods and reporting, in order to offer advice, support and recommendations to help you best manage these changes in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Our review looked at how the proposed changes to methods have been handled, how the report is structured, the status of the output and how it is published, and the general statistical and Code culture. We found that producers are developing more transparent, robust and reproducible methods and have begun improving data timeliness. However, unclear timelines for these method developments and inaccessible reporting formats as well as weaknesses in statistical leadership and compliance with the Code risk damaging user confidence in the statistics. We have made several recommendations to support improvements in these areas and expect you to provide a public update on progress against them by November 2026.

I am grateful for the constructive engagement from you and your teams throughout this review and look forward to receiving updates on progress against the recommendations.

I am copying this letter to Ian Lonsdale, Head of Profession for Statistics, Defra.

Yours sincerely

Rob Kent-Smith

Deputy Head, Office for Statistics Regulation