Enhance Our Own TQV

What we did

As a regulator, OSR must exemplify the standards we expect of others. Focusing on our own TQV helps us practise what we preach and supports our organisational ambition. Enhancing our TQV includes maintaining our independence and separation from producers of statistics (T); enhancing our capability, processes and quality culture (Q); and increasing the effectiveness of our public engagement and how we measure and enhance our impact (V). This helps ensure that we remain a credible, capable and responsive regulator – one that not only holds others to account but is also accountable to others.

Trustworthiness

Management assurance

We published our multi-year strategy in November 2025: How we will strengthen trust and confidence in statistics: 2026–2029. Our Portfolio Review Board (PRB) provides oversight of the delivery and evaluation of the strategy and supporting business plans, our rolling regulatory work programme, finance and resource management, and risk management. We report to Regulation Committee on our performance and publish Annual Reports as an annex to the UK Statistics Authority Annual Report and Accounts, and separately on our website.

Financial assurance

OSR delivered an approximate 6-per-cent underspend for 2025/26.

Risk assurance

OSR has identified a series of strategic risks which are managed closely by our senior leadership team and are reported to each meeting of PRB with a status report and RAG rating for review and challenge, and twice a year to Regulation Committee. Projects and Programmes have delegated authority to manage risk, but we have established mechanisms to escalate risk to PRB via the SLT Sponsor where advice or closer management is required.

Independence: we are perceived by stakeholders not to be able to operate independently

Relevance: we lack credibility as a regulator by not understanding the context we operate within

Voice: we do not say the right thing at the right time through our interventions and judgements

Transformation: our work is deemed insufficient to mitigate risks facing the statistical system

Capability: we do not have the skills and tools to mature as a regulator and uphold the Code

Capacity: we do not have the people capacity to meet evolving demands on us as a regulator

Against this framework, OSR’s risk profile remains stable but continues to be shaped by a small number of key pressures. Demand for regulation is increasing in both scale and complexity, and while recent improvements in funding, prioritisation and recruitment are strengthening our position, capacity remains a risk. Alongside this, risks linked to the performance and transformation of official statistics, particularly in relation to ONS, have reduced compared with previous periods but remain elevated given the scale of ongoing change and continued quality concerns.

Our capability as a regulator is stable and gradually improving, supported by investment in people, tools and ways of working, although some areas remain stretched. Risks around independence, relevance and voice are actively managed and well controlled but continue to require close attention given the high-profile and sometimes contested environment in which we operate.

Overall, the direction of travel is positive, with targeted mitigations in place, but delivery continues to depend on careful prioritisation to ensure we can meet growing expectations of the statistical system.

Audits and Reviews

An internal audit of the processes governing the suspension of official statistics reported in September 2025. This audit was in response to changes in the accreditation status of important ONS official statistics. The report found the risk management and control to be adequate and effective but made some recommendations to ONS and to OSR for improvement. For OSR, this emphasised that we should use as standard the documentation published to support the deaccrediation of the Wealth and Assets Survey. In response to this audit, we have also published a guide to the suspension and cancellation of accreditation in March 2026.

Quality

Our People – Capacity and Capability

We are a team of around 50 people working across the UK, based in UK Statistics Authority offices in with primary locations in Newport, Edinburgh and London and a team presence in Titchfield, Darlington and, from 2025/26, Manchester.

Our baseline budget for 2026/27 is £4 million, including an extra £0.6 million approved by the UK Statistics Authority Board in July 2025 following Spending Review 2025. This funding has supported recruitment of six SEO/HEO Statistics Regulators, an SEO Statistical Standards Advisor and an SEO Data Scientist.

OSR runs a regular skills survey, completed by all staff with their line manager. In 2025/26, we improved it to align more closely with job profiles and a new regulator skills matrix. We delivered a wide-ranging learning programme this year. A major focus was training on the new Code, helping regulators apply it confidently and support producers. We also worked with Security and Information Management teams on areas including security awareness, phishing, and the security and ethical implications of AI. In addition, we contributed to the Civil Service One Big Thing 2025 theme, ‘AI for all’, with sessions on automation, public attitudes to data and AI, large language models, AI quality in official statistics and Copilot prompting.

Two major developments were a comprehensive learning programme for regulators, led by senior leaders and experienced staff, and a standardised induction with modular learning, a planner, and guidance for managers and new starters. We strengthened the talent pipeline through a Leadership Development Programme with six-monthly cohorts, Grade 7 learning on senior leadership, temporary promotion opportunities, regular career conversations and support for loan opportunities. Despite this, our People Survey showed only 51% positive responses on career development in OSR, and the Senior Leadership Team will consider how to improve this.

Overall, our People Survey results compare favourably with the wider Authority and Civil Service, with an engagement score of 76% in 2025, up from 72% in 2024. We have worked with our Wellbeing and Development Committee and the team to understand weaker areas and develop an action plan.

Value

Digital Engagement

The OSR website had 97,000 sessions initiated in 2025/26 compared with 113,000 sessions the previous year. Our Code website has 31,000 sessions initiated. Outputs with the highest views and engagement across the two sites included our report on the quality of Police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales, and the associated blog – Understanding the complexities of crime statistics.

We had 122,000 impressions (views) on X.  Highest numbers of impressions were for a post sharing that we had written to the Covid-19 inquiry regarding the presentation of statistical modelling in the Executive Summary of its Module 2 report.

Posts have generated 70,000 impressions on LinkedIn, compared with 33,000 impressions in 2024/25.  The highest number of impressions was for a video of our Director General giving evidence to PACAC:

Today, Ed Humpherson, Head of Office for Statistics Regulation gave evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee as they consider propriety, ethics and the wider standards landscape in the UK. He highlighted “statistics are part of the lifeblood of democracy if they’re used well. If they’re misused, they become slop, they become misinformation, and that can be an important driver of mistrust. And as a standards-based regulator, we set the standards to ensure that statistics are used well, and we step in when they’re not used well.”

This year we initiated the redevelopment the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) website – for launch later in 2026 – upgrading to the WordPress Gutenberg editor. Integrating the Code of Practice within the main website ensures clearer, more direct access to the Code and related guidance, and we are making compliance judgements and progress updates more accessible.

Evaluating our impact

The OSR Evaluation Strategy published in May 2026 sets out how we will monitor and report progress against the commitments in the OSR Strategy. It provides a transparent and proportionate approach to evaluating our work across the four strategic themes and has three components: a Theory of Change linking our activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts; key performance indicators; and stakeholder feedback.

In 2026/27 we will develop a stakeholder survey to gather feedback from producers, users and partners across the statistical system alongside our quantitative indicators. This will help us understand how OSR’s outputs, such as regulatory judgements, guidance and engagement, are perceived and whether they are supporting stakeholders as intended.