Demand, resources and engagement

This section looks at the different demands on the UK statistical system, how statistics producers are addressing these, the challenges of balancing demand with resources and the continuing work across the statistical system on understanding and addressing statistics users’ views.

Demands in the statistical system

Demand for official statistics in the UK continues to grow in 2025, reflecting a strong desire for timely, high-quality data across government, industry and the public. This includes increasing demands for policy-relevant data and statistics. We are hearing from Heads of Profession that this includes a strong appetite to use data in the UK Government, including to make international comparisons.

The inaugural UK Statistics Assembly in January 2025 provided useful insights into the current demand for data and statistics. Following a call for contributions, sessions covering the following topics were held: Economic statistics and measuring progress; Coherence; Data sourcing, quality and methods; User engagement; Health disparities; Public sector performance; Data linkage; Net zero; The future of the Census; Business statistics; Equalities; Artificial intelligence (AI) and technology; Crime; Labour market; and Local and regional data.

This broad spread of topics meant the Assembly provided insights into user needs, data gaps and the challenges and opportunities confronting the UK statistical system. The Independent report on the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly was published in March 2025. While the Assembly serves as an important engagement exercise, it will be important to prioritise the most critical issues, which may require coordinated efforts across departments. We expect statistics producers to act to understand how they can meet any user needs, including addressing the most critical data gaps, that were identified.

Data gaps arise where there are limited statistics on an existing topic, where there are new emerging issues or where different breakdowns of existing statistics are desired. As society’s information and data needs evolve, gaps in topic areas can become more prominent. Feedback from users can help identify gaps and prompt efforts to expand coverage and address emerging issues.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC)’s report Transforming the UK’s Evidence Base tasked the UK Statistics Authority with establishing a framework for identifying and prioritising demands for evidence and recommended not only an Assembly, but alongside this, research on data gaps and public understanding. It further recommended that we (OSR) support this activity by preparing regular and public reports on data gaps in the UK.

The Government Statistical Service (GSS) has implemented a theme-based approach to provide a way for users of government data and statistics to interact with their area of interest and to collaborate with producers of official statistics. There are 12 core themes, each led by a senior civil servant who is an expert in their subject and at least one deputy from another government department. This approach supports cross-department collaboration.

The UK Statistics Authority is coordinating efforts to enhance cross-GSS topic prioritisation. Each GSS theme group is currently piloting an approach to develop standardised prioritised work plans for their respective areas. These individual plans will be reported to the National Statistics Executive Group and statistical leaders across government to provide a high-level overview of statistical activities related to cross-government responsibilities.

The GSS plans to update these annually to align with government priorities, support departmental business planning and improve data quality. The planning process aims to reduce duplication of efforts and promote collaboration, coherence and best practices across the GSS. Additionally, the plans aim to identify any significant data gaps. The GSS intends to publish high-level information from the thematic plans on the Analysis Function website to ensure transparency. The work is ongoing, with the GSS aiming to publish its findings in the autumn of 2025.

We fully support this approach by the GSS. By coordinating efforts, it has the potential to bring together the needs of users in a transparent way.

Given that this work is ongoing, we will await the publication of the plan in the autumn before determining whether any specific regulatory support would be beneficial, particularly regarding additional support for statistics producers to address data gaps.

During our Code consultation, external stakeholders expressed an interest in the Code being stronger to support producers in addressing data gaps and users in having a greater role in informing decisions on statistical priorities. These views are contributing to the refreshed Code of Practice, which will also be published in the autumn.

Meeting demands – examples of new statistics and insights

The UK Government has launched an ambitious programme of mission-led government, built around five missions and three foundations, as set out in its Plan for Change. Each of the missions is underpinned by statistics. Statistics are used to define the problem and set milestones for progress; monitor progress; and identify links and key drivers of outcomes.

Though missions are a new tool for the UK Government, programmes for government have already existed in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales for some time. The Northern Ireland Executive has the Programme for Government 2024-2027, and similar resources are available for Scotland in the Programme for Government 2025 to 2026 and through Wales’s Programme for government. These programmes are often underpinned by statistical frameworks.

Statistics producers are responding to government demands for data in several ways. Efforts here have included new ad hoc statistical releases, which share insight into a topic as a one-off publication; extending existing official statistical publications, for example to include new breakdowns; and publishing new official statistics or management information data. Examples of statistics producers acting to meet these demands include the following:

• The Department for Education (DfE) has published ad hoc statistics on the schools eligible for RISE intervention and new management information on Breakfast clubs early adopters: schools in the scheme.
• The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has developed a timelier indicator for monitoring progress in building 1.5 million homes. The indicator combines MHCLG’s annual accredited Net Additional Dwellings statistics with weekly Energy Performance Certificate data, and is published in its quarterly indicators of new housing supply.
• NISRA has worked with the Department of Education and their cross-departmental group to develop a new questionnaire and conduct the first official Northern Ireland childcare survey. The results are published as official statistics and provide a new evidence base for future policy on childcare.
• The Home Office is developing new official statistics on neighbourhood policing numbers, and ONS is developing a new survey to understand the prevalence of child abuse in children and young people aged 11–25 years.

Currently there is no central source of publicly available information on the metrics underpinning the UK Government’s missions.

The Independent report on the Statistics Assembly identified meeting user needs for more-granular statistics as a high-level priority for the UK Statistics Authority and the Government Statistical Service (GSS). It recommended that a portfolio of official and unofficial sources, along with the use of appropriate methodologies (small areas, urban/rural, sub-groups of society, under-represented groups and so on), be developed.

Responding to user needs, statistics producers are working to provide more-detailed and granular statistics, as demonstrated by the following examples of producer activities:

• In 2025, the Welsh Government published, for the first time, supply and use tables and input-output tables. These tables, which are the culmination of three years of work, provide a snapshot of the Welsh economy and detail the buying and selling relationships of goods and services between all parts of it for 2019.
• The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has published data for the Participation Survey and Community Life Survey at the local authority level for the first time. It has worked in partnership with the Arts Council and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, respectively, to achieve this.
• The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has acted to fill a data gap we identified in our 2019 review of statistics on post-16 education and skills in England. It has developed a new official statistic in the form of a UK-wide area-based measure of deprivation: the Socioeconomic Index for Small Areas (SEISA).
• The Welsh Government has been reviewing equality data sources and outputs to highlight remaining gaps in data on protected characteristics and provide a baseline to continue improving the granularity and availability of data on protected characteristics in Wales. It has since filled a number of gaps.
• The launch of a new, award-winning ONS Explore Local Statistics (ELS) service, which went live in April 2025, enables people to find, visualise, compare and download subnational data, accessibly presented to both the public and local policymakers.
• NISRA’s Programme for Government Wellbeing Framework and award-winning Wellbeing Dashboard categorises indicators by different demographic and protected groups, including sex, age, marital status, religion, disability, ethnic group, sexual orientation, dependants’ status and political opinion. Geographic breakdowns are also provided to identify inequalities between council areas, assembly areas, urban and rural areas and areas of multiple deprivation.

Statistics producers are striving to meet new needs and provide new insights, whether this be through increased data sharing or data linkage opportunities, collaboration with government departments, introducing new data sources, developing more efficient and effective methods or a combination of actions:

• The Scottish Government has developed Criminal Justice Journey Times – a new data product that estimates the time taken for cases to progress from offence to conclusion. Justice Analytical Services collaborated with Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to link data across the justice system. The resulting bulletin and interactive dashboard provide insights to support pandemic recovery, improve efficiency and inform decisions by the Criminal Justice Board.
• Producers are continuing to invest in reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) to deliver quality and efficiency benefits. The Home Office has developed tools, including the Analytics Workbench, to support this way of working.
• The Welsh Government is adopting RAPs as a standard, using a set of common analytical tools. This effort has involved extensive skill-building, supported by a community-led learning program. They are starting to see time savings and expect improvements in quality, capacity and the wellbeing of statisticians over time.
• In Northern Ireland, NISRA has developed a RAP strategy with the aim of automating all key statistical processes and outputs by 2029, in line with their new Corporate Plan. Training pathways have been established for producers and their managers, supported by peer-to-peer guidance and the Tech-Lab centre of excellence to assist with RAP implementation. Initial feedback indicates significant capacity savings after initial resource investment, which allows statisticians to focus on value-added activities, while users notice improvements in output quality and timeliness.
• To advance the use of RAPs and open-source tools, the Scottish Government has developed sgplot, an R package for creating accessible charts using Scottish Government colour schemes based on the Government Analysis Function Data Visualisation guidance. In 2024 the Analysis Function published afcharts, its own version of the package recognising the work done in Scotland.

Balancing demands and resource challenges

The Code of Practice for Statistics highlights the importance of sufficient resources to deliver statistical services for the public good, and that producers should review the statistics they produce to ensure their value to users. Statistics producers are facing consistent demands for new data and insight, whilst also acting to meet the expectation of their users and sustain current outputs. Statistics producers across the UK are increasingly having to balance these needs, and at times, this is requiring them to make tough choices.

The mix of demands being placed on statistics producers means they are increasingly having to make decisions to cut back, or think about cutting back, on some of the statistics they produce. This can involve reducing the detail of statistics, supporting content and commentary and the frequency of production, or in some cases stopping producing some statistics. Expectations from users can make decisions to stop or reduce statistics publications challenging for producers. Views shared at the Statistics Assembly in January highlight the importance that users place on statistics producers clearly explaining their decisions and their needs to balance competing demands.

We have supported where producers have been transparent about taking these decisions, both through our correspondence and by publishing Northern Ireland case studies and Scotland case studies.

In May 2025, we supported Public Health Scotland (PHS)’s decision to pause data collection for, and production of, the quarterly statistics on adherence to the NHS Scotland 18-week referral to treatment (RTT) standard. PHS explained that it is acting to prioritise its work and release capacity when new information needs arise – in this case, the development of key statistics to monitor progress towards the Scottish Government’s commitment to treat 150,000 more patients by March 2026. PHS has consulted with core users and is seeking feedback to assess the impact of the decision. It has also published a blog describing its approach to supporting NHS renewal with data and explaining the pause in RTT statistics.

The Ministry of Defence has identified a need to free up resource for other work, including new analysis, and has engaged with users to help it make decisions on what statistics can be ceased or reduced in frequency. For instance, it has consulted on and ceased the UK service personnel amputation statistics and the defence personnel NHS commissioning statistics and is currently consulting on reducing the frequency of the Forces Help to Buy Scheme statistics.

As we shared in our April 2025 Review of ONS Economic Statistics, making sufficient resources available for its high-priority economic statistics has been a consistent challenge for ONS. Despite increasing resources after the 2016 Bean review, growing demands and recent changes, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have made it difficult for ONS to maintain real-terms funding for core economic statistics and supporting data sources. To help manage these challenges at an organisational level, ONS has set out in its 2025/26 Strategic Business Plan what statistics it is stopping, reducing or slowing down work on this year. It has also, with the publication in June 2025 of its plan for economic statistics, set out its intention to re-prioritise its published business plan, redirect analytical teams from social and public policy topics to work on its core statistics and streamline management roles and consolidate its supporting functions. Collectively these measures aim to bring an additional £10m investment (which will fund around 150 new skilled roles) into core economic and population statistics over the next two years.

The Scottish Government’s statistical strategic priorities for its Statistics Group are centred on how it can improve statistical work to focus on what provides the greatest value in producing statistics for the public good. The Scottish Government has told us these priorities are supporting its statisticians to uphold their impartial role and responsibility to produce statistics for the public good. These may involve considering the bigger picture in their work and making difficult decisions to discontinue certain statistics. A recent review across the Scottish Government and National Records of Scotland showed that nine statistical publications had been paused or stopped to better reflect user needs and reprioritise resource elsewhere.

In our Statement to Government published in September 2024, we stated that it is crucial that core statistics are sufficiently resourced and funded in order to serve the public good. Limited resources are impacting the ability of statistics producers to innovate and improve statistical methods whilst also continuing to deliver core business-as-usual statistics that meet the needs of those who use them.

The UK Government spending review settlements for the period 2026 to 2028 were published in June 2025, but any pressures across the UK statistical system are not easily visible. As of 31 March 2024 (the most recent data), there were 3,505 people recorded as working in the statistics profession in the UK Civil Service in published civil service statistics. Of these, approximately 18% work in the UK Statistics Authority, which includes ONS. Northern Ireland has a separate civil service, and as of 1 April 2024 (the most recent published data), had 334 members of staff recorded as statisticians in its published personnel statistics.

We want to see much more detailed information made publicly available about the numbers, skills and resources that the Government Statistical Service (GSS) has at its disposal. This information would make it easier for the statistical system to understand the totality of the pressures it faces, how these are changing over time and to identify any necessary actions. Although the system must address financial constraints faced by all government areas, it is important that core statistics receive adequate resources to serve the public good.

The current demand and resource issues show that statistics producers are making significant decisions to meet user needs. Statistics producers must balance the need for high-quality, relevant statistics with funding limitations through strategic prioritisation and clear communication. Transparent decision making and seeking user feedback are essential to adapting to new data requirements.

Engaging with users

Understanding the needs of users helps producers to communicate and explain their statistics, respond to challenges and determine how they can best position their outputs in a societal context. We have previously highlighted that users wanted to see official statistics producers listen more, be more transparent and be less defensive when facing criticism.

In July 2024, the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) published its report Public Statistics, which outlined a fresh approach and vision for statistics to serve the wider public good. The report highlighted the importance of starting with user need when thinking about public good, and how access to and insight from a wide range of datasets from inside and outside government can meet that user need.

Recognising the user landscape and the recommendations of the Lievesley review, the first Statistical Assembly, jointly organised by the Authority and the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), took place on 22 January 2025. This important initiative sought to bring together the widest possible range of users and producers of official statistics to discuss the priorities, opportunities and challenges facing the statistical system in the short to medium term.

As part of the Assembly, specific views were sought on how effectively the statistical system engages with users. From these views, recommendations were made on how producers can develop and improve user engagement practices. These recommendations included adding a ‘Comments’ box to publications; developing mechanisms allowing producers to explain their decisions and prioritisation, and why things may not be happening; and developing a joined-up strategy formalising an approach to user engagement that considers balancing views, explaining decisions and supporting theme groups. Firm commitment to implement these recommendations is now needed from across the statistical system to ensure that user engagement improves.

Enhanced engagement is critical to improve users’ understanding of the uses and limitations of statistics, including associated uncertainty, and to better understand users’ needs. Recent OSR assessments, including those undertaken on ONS’s UK business enterprise research and development statistics, Skills for Care’s adult social services departments workforce in England statistics, ONS’s admin-based population estimates statistics and ONS’s business investment statistics, have highlighted the need for better communication with users on such matters.

Whilst engaging with producers and conducting our regulatory work, we have also seen good examples of user engagement:

• Throughout the Northern Ireland Census 2021 process, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) demonstrated strong user engagement practices by conducting two public consultations to shape outputs, seeking external expert input, holding community liaison events to raise awareness and maintaining an open dialogue with users to understand their diverse needs. Through this engagement, NISRA developed a good understanding of the wide range of potential users of its outputs from both within the statistical system and in wider society. Our Phase 3 Assessment report, published in February 2025, found that effective user engagement had been instrumental in ensuring that NISRA had recognised the range of potential uses for the statistics. As a result, users felt that the census results had value in both describing society and aiding research and decision making.
• The Department for Education maximises the use of having its own publishing platform, Explore education statistics, by tracking a range of user behaviour. It has developed and released an analytics app for staff that can show a range of user analytics information at a service and publication level. Teams are encouraged to use the tool to help prioritise work and assess impact. Furthermore, each page on Explore Education now features an ‘is this page useful?’ prompt to allow users to provide feedback quickly.
• The Welsh Government has undertaken an engagement process involving a report, seminars and a user survey to understand user opinions on plans for developing indicators for the next Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD).
• Our reviews of the Price Index of Private Rents and the Crime Survey for England and Wales statistics, both published by ONS, highlighted good-practice examples of open and active engagement with users.
• ONS’s engagement with users of labour market statistics has improved. ONS has developed ways to work more closely with expert users, such as introducing a monthly Technical Engagement Group to provide a forum to discuss upcoming developments and improvements in an open and transparent manner. In June 2024, ONS established the Stakeholder Advisory Panel on Labour Market Statistics, chaired by Professor Jonathan Portes. In addition, ONS has consulted with a range of experts from academia.
• We recommended in our September 2024 review of ONS’s 2021 England and Wales Census gender identity statistics that stakeholders should be fully involved and engaged in future work to help build and restore confidence. Since our review, ONS has written two blogs explaining the work being undertaken, and the GSS has published a detailed workplan on the topics of sex and gender identity and successfully rolled out a series of regional events for stakeholders.

As in previous years, we have seen good examples of user engagement across the system, with a general sense of improvement in this space. However, there is still a need to share best practice more widely across the statistical system and consult with a broader range of users. We encourage producers to act on the findings from this year’s Statistical Assembly and consider them when conducting future work.

Recommendations