Monitoring progress

Progress on prioritisation, governance and transparency

ONS reports that its next update, in July 2026, will reflect the outcomes of its business planning process, and set out further details on priorities and on the improvements held in the “waiting room”. The waiting room has been established to provide assurance that developments are fully tested, prioritised, affordable prior to implementation.

ONS also proposes to rationalise the current set of milestones and to integrate them with a smaller set of outcome-focused key performance indicators (KPIs).

Evidence of clear improvements since the first progress report include:

• Explicit prioritisation with a focus on sustainable core economic and population statistics with a new tiering framework, addressing quality concerns, and progressing the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), albeit with some delays.
• The integration of the Economics Statistics Plan and the Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan.
• Better governance and more transparency around challenges.
• Sustained improvement in stakeholder engagement.
• A commitment to a more transparent and systematic approach to quality reviews.
• Launching a data governance framework supporting an integrated approach to data sources covering both surveys and administrative data.

We also understand that business planning resource allocation for 2026/27 will be more closely aligned with supporting economic statistics, continuous improvement and transformation.

Many of our recommendations and suggestions for improved transparency have been addressed, at least in part, by:

• The inclusion of a table on milestones, and more explanation of the reasons why some milestones for 2025/26 have been delayed or missed.
• Fuller explanation of the major challenges associated with the delayed or missed milestones.
• Greater clarity about what will be prioritised and how this prioritisation will be undertaken.
• Explanation of the nature and function of the “waiting room” – this helps with stakeholders’ understanding of ONS’s approach to prioritisation and to its assessment of competition for limited resources.

We note that stakeholders will expect clear explanations of the decisions that flow from implementing the waiting room to maintain confidence in the prioritisation process.

Transparent and effective engagement with key stakeholders may become especially important as ONS prepares for the next census, with the potential for associated resource pressures.

As would be expected at this stage, we agree with ONS that some of the issues we have previously raised remain to be fully addressed:

• While progress is evident and clarity around progress is improved, overall deliverability remains challenging to judge – it is still difficult to monitor whether the overall programme is genuinely on track and how far delivery risks threaten core outputs. ONS is not fully transparent about milestones and pace. Its reporting is still too process-led and too reliant on (lengthy) textual discussion. However, the further developments that ONS has promised for the next update should help address these concerns.
• More specifically, transparency would be improved by the inclusion of a table showing the delivery of KPIs and important milestones by topic area, rather than just the distribution of delivery of milestones, as is currently the case. This information, in such a table, could be linked to the current – and welcome – textual discussion of progress and key challenges, drawing out the implications of missed milestones for statistical quality, risk reduction and the deliverability of the wider programme.
• Transparency would also be increased by ensuring quarterly updates can stand alone, without cross-referencing previous reports. To this end, for key milestones, the report should show what ONS originally planned, what ONS proposed in its Plans for Economic Statistics, progress reported in previous quarterly updates, and where ONS is now.
• Providing such continuity will be particularly important if/when milestones are amended and KPIs introduced, and as the elapsed time since the original plans were published increases. Choices about prioritisation need to be reflected in ONS’s reporting on visible user-facing outcomes. Well-designed KPIs should go a long way to meeting this need.
• ONS’s proposed improved approach to quality reviews is welcome, and we encourage maximum transparency about the results of assessments.
• As we have previously stressed, an important output from the business planning process should be the provision of some cost information disaggregated across outputs. This would assist both in the prioritisation process and in facilitating more effective stakeholder engagement in that process. We acknowledge this is difficult given some inputs are used in support of multiple outputs. Nevertheless, we encourage the ONS to explore what is possible in this area.

We expect that in future our responses to ONS progress reports will be able to focus solely on delivery of key outputs and enablers rather than also on presentational matters. OSR will also review the periodicity of our responses to ONS quarterly updates as ONS embeds its regular quarterly rhythm of reporting and delivery.

Progress on key outputs and enablers

The update report notes welcome improvements to some core statistics, for example, the inclusion of scanner data in price statistics and the restoration of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) achieved sample size to near pre-pandemic levels.

However, ongoing risks and challenges are reflected in the delivery of milestones; over one quarter of the milestones scheduled for delivery in 2025/26 have been delayed.

The transition to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) is taking a long time to get right. This reflects in part user demand for an extended period of double-running, with a stable survey design, before a transition is started. It is welcome that the final set of agreed design changes to the survey were implemented in April. We recently published a report setting out the steps that ONS has been taking towards meeting recommendations for improving statistics from the Labour Force Survey in Great Britain, and its transformation into an online survey (the TLFS).

ONS reports that despite progress with the achieved sample size for the LFS sample, response rates for social surveys more generally remain below pre-pandemic levels. This reflects, in part, challenges in running two labour force surveys and in filling vacancies for field workers. Societal challenges in securing engagement from potential responders are also playing role and we note the steps ONS is taking to explore the potential advantages and disadvantages of a mandatory approach.

More progress is needed here, and transparency will be enhanced by the proposed – and very welcome – Survey Sample and Response Tracker, which provides comprehensive information on trends on survey response rates. We encourage its publication as soon as practicable.

In addition, it will be important that the new approach to data governance and data ownership gives due weight to options for mitigations, if the long–term trend of falling response rates to social surveys returns, and the currently proposed solutions, are not sufficient to address them.

Population estimates underpin many economic statistics.

In March, we wrote to ONS about its revised plans for producing mid-year population estimates. We noted its decision to continue with the current mid-year estimates and focus on continuous improvement of the current methods.

We therefore support ONS’s intention to reconsider the previous milestones set out in the economic statistics plan, within the broader context of a 2031 census. We expect ONS to use the findings from our upcoming compliance review of its mid-year estimates for England and Wales to help shape its priorities for improving population estimates going forward. Progress on improving population statistics will be reported separately, with dependencies highlighted in economic statistics progress reporting.

ONS’s update report notes that progress on the new Statistical Business Register has been slower than planned, with associated milestones delayed. We understand that ONS has put actions in train to strengthen the programme and has agreed that the new register is a top priority for the office.  The new register is critical for enabling a range of improvements to statistical quality, and it will be important to ensure delivery against the revised milestones. Further delays would undermine stakeholder confidence. It is important to that the ONS keeps stakeholders up to date as the programme is strengthened and as plans evolve. To support the ONS with their work on the register, we plan to undertake a review of it against the Code of Practice for Statistics over the summer.