List of recommendations

As well as requiring that ONS follows through with the improvements in its Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan, based on the findings of this report, we have identified three recommendations for improvements to further meet user needs:

Recommendation 1: To help users mitigate data quality issues, ONS should develop a timetable to provide more-accessible explanations of data changes, engaging with their expert users on what variables they are looking to merge by April 2026, and publish the timetable at the time of the next release.

Recommendation 2: To make the data even more relevant for their analyses of household spending, it would help users to publish the data closer to the end of the survey data collection period. ONS should set out, by April 2026, the steps it is taking to ensure that the speed up of the data processing delivers the Family Spending output closer to the target of one year after the close of the survey data collection period.

Recommendation 3: To enable users to understand the implications of the sample size on the quality of the data, and allow users to choose the best data for their needs, ONS should update the quality and methodology information and include explanations about survey bias, representativeness, comparability and implications for the use of the data by autumn 2026.