Reviewing the Code of Practice

Following a review of the Code of Practice for Statistics in 2023, we launched a consultation seeking feedback on OSR’s proposals for a new edition of the Code of Practice for Statistics in October 2024 and will use this information to develop a final proposal for Code 3.0, which we plan to publish in autumn 2025. The consultation ran until February 2025. During this time, we engaged in just under forty stakeholder events and meetings, including an online session jointly hosted with the Royal Statistics Society, and we received 61 formal written responses. We reported our findings in May 2025.

The Code sets the standards for the production of official statistics, and when these standards are implemented by producers, they support the public good and inspire public confidence. In refreshing the Code our aim is to ensure the universality of the Code is clear to a wide range of audiences – producers of official statistics, other analysts within and beyond government, users of statistics and members of the public – and to set out even more clearly the principles of Trustworthiness, Quality and Value (TQV).

Code 3.0 will preserve the core concepts of TQV while making material improvements to the content and presentation, for example incorporating our work on intelligent transparency in the use of statistics in public communication.