It is clear to anyone who follows the UK’s statistics system that the last year has been a difficult one. It has included challenges to the quality of ONS’s economic statistics, and a more general concern about the decline of response rates to household surveys. These challenges culminated in the announcement of the review undertaken by Sir Robert Devereux into the ONS’s performance and culture. Sir Robert’s review was published on 26 June 2025.

In this context, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has continued to carry out our core roles of assessing the extent to which statistics comply with the Code of Practice, and supporting the appropriate use of statistics in the public domain. This report demonstrates the breadth of our work in pursuit of these goals, including 15 de-accreditations of statistics, reflecting the quality issues that have affected ONS statistics. Just after the end of the financial year reported on in this report, we published a comprehensive review of ONS’s economic statistics. This review highlighted the decline in stakeholder confidence in the ONS’s statistics. We set urgent requirements for the ONS to publish a survey recovery plan and a strategy for economic statistics, both of which were also published on 26 June 2025.

But OSR’s work extends much further than looking at ONS’s economic statistics. Our remit covers all statistics produced across the UK, and we have met this remit in full. We have published important reviews of population statistics in England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; a review of data sharing and linkage across the UK; guidance on sex and gender; and our annual state of the statistics system report. In total we undertook 21 compliance reviews and dealt with 219 cases surrounding the use of statistics.

Our most important intervention for the benefit of statistics in the UK remains the Code of Practice for Statistics. The Code acts as the glue which holds the disparate range of organisations that produce statistics together. It sets common standards, a common framework and, in TQV (trustworthiness, quality and value), sets a common philosophy for statistics that serve the public good. During 2024/5 we developed our thinking on a refreshed Code of Practice, which will lead later this year to a new version. This new version will be more direct, more accessible and, crucially, will include firm standards on intelligent transparency for the use of data and statistics in public communications by ministers and departments. The principles of intelligent transparency are already showing their value. They underpinned our work to support the use of statistics during the UK’s 2024 General Election campaign, and they have been taken up with genuine enthusiasm by the analytical functions across government departments.

I am very proud of the work of my team, as outlined in this report. They are dedicated professionals who are committed to the vision of statistics serving the public good, and the report demonstrates that, through their work, OSR continues to be a crucial bedrock for statistics and data in the UK.

Ed Humpherson, Director General, Office for Statistics Regulation