Summary judgement

ES.1 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) asked the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to assess two related sets of statistics: Butterflies in the United Kingdom: habitat specialists and species of the wider countryside and the Butterflies in England: species of the wider countryside on farmland and in woodland. These butterfly statistics are valued by a range of users across policy areas, academia, and research, and form part of the Biodiversity Indicators suite of indicators, many of which are designated National Statistics in their own right. In requesting this assessment, the Environmental Indicators, Statistics and Reporting team is demonstrating its commitment to produce statistics that meet the standards required of National Statistics and the Code of Practice for Statistics.

ES.2 We have identified four requirements for Defra to fulfil for statistics from the publications to be designated as National Statistics. Defra should aim to achieve this prior to the next release of data in October 2023. Once Defra demonstrates that these steps have been undertaken, OSR will recommend that the UK Statistics Authority designate the statistics as National Statistics.