Introduction
We would typically have shared our Annual Business Plan with you by this point in the year and you may be wondering at its absence.
We are currently working to develop our multi-year strategy for 2025-2030 and the intention is to publish a full business plan alongside that strategy in the autumn, so you can see the full context.
We’ve been engaging with stakeholders and developing our thinking, but with two independent reviews announced in April 2025, we think it is important to allow time to reflect on the findings before finalising the strategy.
The UK Statistics Authority and Cabinet Office jointly commissioned Sir Robert Devereux to lead a review of the performance and culture of the Office for National Statistics, and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee announced an Inquiry into the work of the UK Statistics Authority.
To fill any gap in information until the full plans are available, we aim here to set out our priorities for the next six months. We have also updated our Rolling Regulatory Work Programme with the list of projects we are working on, alongside our ongoing casework interventions.
If you have any questions about these short-term plans or you’d like to engage on our strategy, please do get in touch. You can email regulation@statistics.gov.uk or reach out to any existing contacts you have within OSR.
6-Month Priorities
Code of Practice 3.0
After completing our consultation on the proposed third edition of the Code of Practice for Statistics we have published a summary report of what we were told. We are now using that feedback to complete the refresh of the Code so that it remains relevant in a data landscape experiencing substantial changes – including the rapid growth of new technologies, an increased desire for statistics from users, and developments in the ways statistics are produced and disseminated. We aim to release Code 3.0 in autumn 2025. We will invest time in embedding the Code with those producing official statistics and those involved in the public communication of statistics, data and wider analysis across government, as well as with analysts beyond government.
State of the Statistical System 2025
This annual report draws together evidence from our regulatory work and targeted engagement to provide our regulatory view on how the statistical system in the UK is performing. This will be the sixth year that we have published the report, which will provide an important input to the annual public lecture from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority on the work of the statistical system.
Economic and Labour Market Statistics
Our systemic review of economic statistics produced by ONS was published on 7 April 2025. We intend to review ONS’s response to this report in autumn 2025 and publish our overall findings, including relevant insights from the review by Sir Robert Devereux. We will also continue to monitor ONS’s efforts to improve the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and work on the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS).
Household Surveys
We have set out our intention to undertake further regulatory work on response issues impacting household surveys used across the statistics landscape. In addition to our work on LFS and TLFS, in June 2025 we have published a review of the Wealth and Assets Survey, following which the accredited official statistics status of the related statistics has been suspended. We are now reviewing the Living Costs and Food Survey.
Population and Migration Statistics
In June 2025 we published the third and final phase of our assessment of the 2021 Census in England and Wales, focused on the extent to which ONS fulfilled its commitments from 2022 and met the needs of statistics and data users with the 2021 Census for England and Wales outputs. We will engage with ONS as they seek to meet the requirements over the coming six months. We will continue to shape our regulatory activity as ONS progress work on the future of population and migration statistics.
Communicating Statistics
We are continuing our work on our flag ship campaign of intelligent transparency. Over the next few months, we will be focusing on introducing intelligent transparency into the Code of Practice for Statistics 3.0, ensuring that we are supporting departments to fully embed the principles. We are also undertaking a review of ministerial departments to understand what processes are already in place to support intelligent transparency and what barriers departments are facing, we hope to share some high-level findings from this review in the Autumn. We are continuing to consider whether to introduce ‘report cards’ for intelligent transparency following the PACAC recommendation in the 2024 report, Transforming the UK Evidence Base. Outside of intelligent transparency, we are continuing our work on communicating statistics more widely with a current focus on how dashboards should be produced in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Rolling Regulatory Programme
We will continue to update our Rolling Regulatory Work Programme to provide oversight of the work we are doing across the statistical system that goes beyond the priorities listed here. Examples include assessments of Cancer Waiting Time statistics (NHS England) and NHS Scotland Workforce statistics (NHS Education for Scotland), compliance reviews of Coroner Statistics England and Wales (Ministry of Justice) and Tourism statistics (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency), and research into driving trust in official statistics.