Statistics on Energy and Climate Change

Mark Pont, Assessment Programme Lead, Office for Statistics Regulation to David Fry, Head of Profession for Statistics, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Dear David,

As you are aware we recently reviewed compliance of your Energy and Climate Change Statistics against the Code of Practice for Statistics. This letter confirms our findings.

Following extensive assessment in 2014 we decided to review these statistics in 2018 based on their strategic importance, to reflect developments in the Climate Change policy environment, and to assess the impact of the formation of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in 2016 on the statistics.

Our focus has been on the maintenance of the quality of the statistics following the formation of BEIS, and to assess the public value of the statistics, including whether they have evolved to meet the needs of users and the changing policy environments.

We have concluded that BEIS energy and climate change statistics are produced independently, are of sound quality and offer robust insights to users. Strengths include:

The constructive relationships established – with data suppliers to promote understanding and transparency of statistical quality and quality assurance procedures, and with other statistics producers to provide a coherent narrative and address issues such as trade asymmetries, relating to country of destination of oil deliveries.
The quality assurance of outputs through triangulation with external sources such as industry surveys and publications.
The ongoing innovations and improvements to support and promote the use of the statistics by all types of users, including the development of the National Energy Efficiency Data–Framework (NEED), the launch of an API (Application Programming Interface) and continued improvement of the diverse suite of statistical publications such as UK Energy in brief and Energy flow charts.
The supplementary information published alongside the statistical releases, including a glossary of terms, links to related statistics and information on major events and policies in the industry, which enhance the relevance and insightfulness of the statistics for users.

We also welcome the recent update to the quality assurance information and the integration of statistical governance documents to reflect the formation of BEIS, matters we discussed as part of this review.

I am therefore pleased to confirm the continued designation of Energy and Climate Change Statistics as National Statistics. Furthermore, our review identified examples of best practice, which we would be delighted to feature as case studies within the interactive Code of Practice for Statistics on the UK Statistics Authority website.

I am copying this letter to Jane Chandler, Head of Energy and Climate Change Statistics.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Pont

Statistical publications covered in this review