Introduction

What we do

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, a body established by the Statistics and Registration Service Act (2007).

We are independent from government Ministers. We are separate from producers of statistics, including the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

In line with the Statistics and Registration Service Act (2007) our principal roles are to:

• set the statutory Code of Practice for Statistics
• assess compliance with the Code of Practice
• award the National Statistics designation to official statistics that comply fully with the Code of Practice
• report any concerns on the quality and comprehensiveness of official statistics
• report any concerns on good practice in relation to official statistics

The Director General for Regulation is the head of OSR and reports directly to the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority. To ensure independence from ONS, the Director General Regulation has no reporting line to the National Statistician and is an Additional Accounting Officer with budgetary responsibility for the OSR.

The OSR’s business plan is agreed by the Regulation Committee which comprises the Director General Regulation and a number of Non-Executive Directors from the UK Statistics Authority, the Committee also commend a supporting budget for the delivery of the business plan.

This plan

This annual business plan focuses on what we aim to achieve in 2024/25, and how our work will contribute to delivering the OSR Strategic Plan, 2020 to 2025 and fostering the Authority’s ambitions for the statistics system, as set out in the Authority Strategy.

As we enter the final year of our strategic 5-year plan, we are confident that our priorities for 2023/24 still resonate strongly and we will carry them into the coming year. We have refreshed our plan of how we will deliver on these priorities, reflecting the activities we have completed and those activities that continue or will be new for the coming year.

We intentionally retain flexibility in our programme to allow us to respond to changes in the external environment. We publish a Rolling Regulatory Work Programme that outlines the status of our priority projects and we update it approximately every 6 weeks as programming decisions are taken by our Portfolio Review Board.

This flexibility will be particularly important in 2024/25 with a General Election on the horizon. We will be paying close attention to how all participants in public debate are acting with the public good in mind. We will advocate the principles of intelligent transparency and will intervene where required.

We adopt a self-assessment model to measure our performance towards our vision for 2025 and we monitor a dashboard through our Portfolio Review Board, and report to the Regulation Committee and Authority Board. Our reporting builds on evaluation of delivery against our annual high-level priorities (monthly) and our longer-term outcomes and impacts (quarterly). We are currently developing a small set of KPIs to provide valuable insights to how we are performing as a regulator.

Our Vision

Our vision is simple: statistics should serve the public good.

What do we mean by serving the public good? Statistics published by public sector bodies should be produced in a trustworthy way, be of high quality, and provide value by answering people’s questions: providing accountability, helping people make choices and informing policy. And statistics are part of the lifeblood of democratic debate.

Statistics therefore should serve a very wide range of users. When they meet the needs of these users, they serve the public good.

But they do not always fulfil these ambitions. Their value can be harmed – through poor production, lack of relevance and coherence, and through misuse.

It is our role as regulator to minimise these problems. We have observed the increasing relevance of our Trustworthiness, Quality and Value approach to statistics regulation. By championing high standards, we uphold public confidence in statistics that serve the public good.