Chapter 3: Trustworthiness

Findings

3.1 The statistics from the PaNS are produced independently and presented impartially and pre-release access is kept to a minimum. The survey data are collected, stored, and processed in line with the relevant government legislation.

3.2 There are good links with the Head of Profession for statistics at DEFRA and his deputy, with the PaNS team at Natural England seeing them as an invaluable resource to provide support and advice. Staff are recruited in line with the relevant competency frameworks and receive on-the-job training as well as more organisation-wide training including on the Code of Practice for statistics.

3.3 There have been previous breaches of the Code of Practice for Statistics. It is good that the team has learnt lessons from these and is applying best practice to prevent any further breaches, including extra measures within their quality assurance processes.

3.4 It is not clear if there are any revisions or corrections made to the data. To provide transparency around revisions and corrections Natural England has agreed to signpost users to the Defra group revisions and corrections policy statement.