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 Public Health England (PHE) (previously produced by the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse) and reported in:
• Statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) (Annual Drug Report)
• Monthly reports from the NDTMS (Monthly Drug Report)
The previous assessments of these sets of statistics were reported in Assessment reports 1 and 142. They have been re-assessed as part of the Statistics Authority’s ongoing programme of re-assessment. This is discussed further in annex 4.
The Act allows an appropriate authority to request an assessment of other official statistics in order for them to gain National Statistics status. In response to such a request, this report also covers the following the sets of statistics produced by PHE:
• Alcohol Statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) (Annual Alcohol Report)
• Statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS): Statistics relating to young people (Annual Young People Report)
Section 3 of this report adopts an ‘exception reporting’ approach – it includes text only to support the Requirements made to strengthen compliance with the Code and Suggestions made to improve confidence in the production, management and dissemination of these statistics. This abbreviated style of report reflects the Head of Assessment’s consideration of aspects of risk and materiality. The Assessment team nonetheless assessed compliance with all parts of the Code of Practice and has commented on all those in respect of which some remedial action is recommended.
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.