This is one of a series of reports prepared under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Act gives the Statistics Authority power to re-assess whether the Code of Practice for Official Statistics continues to be complied with in relation to official statistics already designated as National Statistics. The report covers the set of statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and reported in:
• Crime in England and Wales (Crime)
• Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences (Violent Crime)
• Focus on Public Perceptions of Policing, Findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (Perceptions)
• Focus on Property Crime (Property Crime)
• Other ‘Focus on’ topic-based statistical reports related to crime statistics (forthcoming)
The previous assessment of these sets of statistics was reported in Assessment report 102 published in April 2011. They have been prioritised for re-assessment partly due to the high profile nature of concerns raised recently about some aspects of the police’s recording of crime data, and partly reflecting the fact that responsibility for the production of the statistics transferred from the Home Office to ONS in April 2012. This is discussed further in section 2 and annex 4.
This report was prepared by the Authority’s Assessment team, and approved by the Assessment Committee on behalf of the Board of the Statistics Authority, based on the advice of the Head of Assessment.