Overview

In July 2024 we initiated a review of economic statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). We published an interim report in April 2025, and a final report in November 2025. At our request, in December 2025, ONS published its first quarterly reports detailing its progress on its plans to improve key economic statistics. This report sets out our response and further recommendations.

Overall assessment

In assessing the progress set out in ONS’s first quarterly progress reports, we have benefited from discussions with key stakeholders. We have also considered progress reported by ONS against recommendations made in previous OSR assessments of individual economic statistics.

OSR welcomes the evidence of early progress presented by ONS in its first quarterly reports and reflected in decisions on re-prioritisation in the autumn.

OSR judges that the first quarterly reports provides evidence that ONS is meeting the immediate requirements set out in the interim and final reports of our systemic review. The transparency shown in reporting and ONS’s engagement with OSR and stakeholders demonstrates a positive cultural change in ONS senior leadership. However, the quality problems that ONS faces are both real and challenging to address, and the response programme remains very ambitious.

There have been early successes, including the resumption of regular publications of producer price statistics, restoration of response rates to the Labour Force Survey to near pre-pandemic levels and the publication of a successful Blue Book update. Alongside its cultural reset, ONS will need to ensure ongoing re-prioritisation, clarity and realism as it progresses delivery.

Some stakeholders have commented that in the past ONS has over-promised, and that in consequence timely delivery of the commitments made in its plans is vital to fully restore confidence.

OSR acknowledges the speed and transparency with which ONS has responded to recent errors. Stakeholders told OSR that they welcomed ONS’s more transparent approach and that it was important that all users recognised that the transparent identification of errors and their rapid correction was an indication of an improving organisation rather than a sign of continuing failure.

Stakeholders also noted that some commentators fail to distinguish between errors and revisions, and that the latter are an inevitable feature of the production of timely and reliable statistics.

ONS’s creation of a stakeholder engagement group has been widely welcomed, though stakeholders noted that it was too early to assess its effectiveness. In addition, stakeholders commented that it was vital that the new group did not displace working-level engagement, which has often been the most important route to ensuring that stakeholder needs were being met.

This report sets out further recommendations on additional steps that ONS can take to increase transparency on its progress. Given the comparatively short time between progress updates and our response, we expect ONS to iteratively implement these recommendations in the next two quarterly updates.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1: To increase the usefulness of updates for users, ONS should ensure future updates are more succinct, accessible and user focused.

Recommendation 2: ONS should make a more disaggregated analysis of the costs associated with each of its major outputs available in its business planning and prioritisation processes.

Recommendation 3: In its next update, ONS should provide further information on a prioritised programme of quality reviews, recruitment and retention and legacy systems.