Overview of 2024/25 casework

This year saw a small decrease in the number of requests for casework investigations that OSR received, falling from 231 in 2023/24 to 219 in 2024/25. OSR’s casework numbers are still noticeably higher, however, than the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period (before 2020), as illustrated by the graph in Figure 1. 

Figure 1. Number of requests for casework investigations received by OSR by year (2019/20 to 2024/25)

Note. The graph in Figure 1 presents two series. The first, ‘Number of issues’, shows the number of separate issues that have been raised with us. The second, ‘Number of cases’, shows the total number of cases that we have received each year. Where we received more than two cases on the same issue raising the same concerns, this has been recorded as one issue. 

The 2024/25 period saw some changes in who was raising cases with us. Approximately 60% of cases were generated by members of the public, up from 53% in 2023/24. We had the same number of cases raised with us by members of parliament (MPs) compared to the previous year (16 cases), demonstrating a small increase from 6.9% to 7.3%. Finally, there was a reduction in the proportion of internally generated cases (from 18% to 11%). 

Of the cases raised with OSR over the last year, we issued 168 private responses and 20 public responses. We made no response to a further 26 enquiries; these mostly related to casework generated internally by OSR staff. At the time of publication, 1 case was still awaiting a response. 

We categorise each piece of casework according to the primary issue we investigate, enabling us to track casework by issue type. While overall casework numbers have decreased slightly since 2023/24, the types of issues we investigated in 2024/25 changed significantly compared to the previous year. For example, there was an increase in the percentage of cases primarily concerned with the use or misuse of statistics (from 7% in 2023/24 to 32% in 2024/25), whereas the percentage of cases which involved a primary concern around a presentational issue decreased from 58% in 2023/24 to 29% in 2024/25. 

Figure 2. Casework by issue type (2023/24 and 2024/25)

This graph shows a comparison of casework by issue type in 2023/24 and 2024/25. It shows that while the main casework issue type in 2023/24 was the presentation of statistics, in 2024/25 the main casework issue was the use or misuse of statistics. See full data here.