Executive Summary

ES.1 We initiated this systemic review of economic statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in July 2024.

ES.2 The aim of the review is to identify high-level, cross-cutting issues, focusing on data sources for economic statistics, stakeholder needs and engagement and related organisational factors.

ES.3 This interim report presents the evidence gathered in the initial stages of the review, which has focused mainly on data sources, and sets out our emerging conclusions and requirements for ONS.

ES.4 This report summarises the judgements made by OSR as the regulator of ONS’s statistics. We formed our judgements by gathering evidence from four main sources:

• OSR’s own assessments of economic statistics, consisting of 26 assessments (listed in Annex 2). Each assessment is an in-depth analysis of how far the statistics in question comply with the Code of Practice, and provides a detailed and comprehensive picture of the statistics that it assesses.
• Stakeholder views, based on semi-structured interviews with 25 key stakeholders, and supplemented by evidence from the Statistics Assembly (attended by over 500 people), the Statistics Assembly report, and feedback provided by individual stakeholders in the course of OSR’s business, such as the Royal Statistical Society and the Better Statistics campaign.
• ONS staff views, based on focus groups and interviews with around 40 ONS staff, predominantly based in economic statistics and data sources.
• OSR’s analysis of financial and staffing information provided to us by the ONS finance team.

ES.5 We have based our findings and conclusions on triangulation of evidence across these evidence sources, identifying patterns and issues that recur across the sources. Where we encountered evidence from one source that was not reinforced by another, but was nevertheless a significant observation, we have included it in the body of the report but not formed a judgement or conclusion about it. A fuller description of our evidence sources is provided by the section entitled Approach to the Review.

Key findings

Our core findings are as follows:

ES.6 Efforts here have included methodological improvements to the National Accounts, particularly the introduction of double deflation, and a range of improvements to price statistics, including positive developments on the measurement of private sector rents for dwellings (as described in our recent assessment) and on car prices.

ES.7 Multiple stakeholders expressed strong support for ONS’s work. Particular emphasis was given to the general quality of the National Accounts, the confidence that most users have in ONS’s consumer price statistics, and approval of the developments made in the use of real-time and other timely indicators, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stakeholders also noted major improvements in ONS’s engagement with users of individual statistical outputs.

ES.8 We have conducted a range of regulatory work on economic statistics over the last 5 years. While these regulatory reports note progress on methodology, there are common themes around data quality – including as it relates to survey response rates – and the challenges of using administrative data. And while there are clear improvements in user engagement, we also frequently identify opportunities to strengthen it.

ES.9 While our stakeholder discussions revealed support for ONS, this support would be more consistent if stakeholders had a better understanding of ONS’s strategy and a clearer idea of what ONS regards as its core economic statistics. Differing stakeholder views on ONS priorities led us to conclude that there is no single right answer as to what ONS should focus on. It is therefore crucial that it sets out a clear articulation of its priorities – what it has chosen to focus on and why.

ES.10 These concerns are focused on, but were not limited to, the widely recognised problems with the Labour Force Survey. ONS has achieved improvements in the performance of the Labour Force Survey in 2025, through recruiting more survey interviewers, running targeted communication campaigns to encourage citizens to respond to the survey, and increasing incentives for survey participations. Stakeholders welcomed these improvements, but it is clear that they remain concerned about the quality of survey data overall. On business surveys, while response rates have held up well, reflecting the mandatory nature of these surveys, we also consider that there is a growing risk to their quality and representativeness. ONS staff told us that, despite some encouragement from senior managers, early warning of emerging problems has not always been welcomed.

ES.11 ONS increased the overall level of resources allocated to economic statistics following the 2016 Bean review. But in the context of growing demands and a changing environment, including the pandemic, over recent years ONS has found it difficult to maintain real-terms funding for core economic statistics and particularly supporting data sources. Moreover, resource pressures on economic statistics and on the ONS as a whole have intensified in the last two years. This resource challenge has been exacerbated by “ringfences” in ONS’s funding arrangements put in place by HM Treasury, which restrict spending to specific purposes. These ringfences have reduced ONS’s flexibility to respond to new demands and challenges. HM Treasury has relaxed these ringfences from 1 April 2025. In particular, ONS has struggled to allocate sufficient resources to data collection in the post-pandemic period when data collection became increasingly challenging. Greater transparency over the prioritisation challenges that ONS faces, the efficiencies it has achieved, and the trade-offs it has to make, would both explain the situation to stakeholders and build a credible case for increased resources.

Conclusions

ES.12 We have three conclusions resulting from this review:

1. ONS must fully acknowledge and address declining data quality.

ONS is engaged in ambitious statistical transformation programmes in a challenging context and has made good progress in some areas. This work has included developing and implementing new surveys which give a timelier (Business Impacts and Conditions Survey) and a more granular (Annual Survey of Good and Services) understanding of the economy. ONS has also made significant progress in moving its business survey collection online.

However, in some areas, ONS has faced significant challenges in consistently ensuring that data feeding into economic statistics are of high quality. Most notably, the long-term reduction in response rates to household surveys, including the Labour Force Survey, has severely impacted data quality. ONS has made progress in 2025 in securing improved response to the Labour Force Survey, but this long-term challenge has been associated with a decline in the quality and reliability of some of its key economic statistics.

Although response rates have been a key focus of this review, we would like more assurance that ONS has sufficient steps in place to regularly review and improve sample design and representativeness, bias, survey methodology, and imputation. ONS appears to be finding survey collection more challenging than some of its international peers (see section of main report on survey response rates, and Annex 4), suggesting an urgent need to modernise its collection approach and working practices. In social surveys, these challenges already pose a significant quality issue, while in business surveys, we find increasing levels of risk which, if left unaddressed, could significantly impact quality. ONS is working on a strategic response to these challenges.

2. Making progress with administrative data is difficult.

There have been some good examples of the use of administrative and big data sources in core economic statistics, including the introduction of VAT data into the National Accounts and rail and rental prices data into inflation statistics. However, as a whole, progress in using administrative data from other government departments has been slow, reflecting in part practical and cultural challenges across government. Stakeholders have highlighted that these broader challenges have been further hindered by the lack of a publicly available effective vision and delivery roadmap from ONS.

3. Greater strategic clarity of purpose and transparency on prioritisation would help reassure external stakeholders.

ONS has taken steps to prioritise and maintain funding for economic statistics and data sources. But it is operating in a challenging financial climate across the public sector. In an environment of funding pressures, ONS can increase the confidence of its stakeholders by providing clearer explanations of the pressures it faces, the priorities it has set and the resource allocation decisions it makes.

After increases earlier years, there was a fall in staff and budgets for data collection. Insufficient investment is a key factor in the data quality issues that have subsequently emerged. It is harder to draw firm conclusions on the funding of economic statistics production overall.

In this context, we consider that there has been a lack of transparency about what ONS regards as its core purpose for economic statistics, and ONS staff and stakeholders have expressed concern about the effectiveness of its decision-making in allocating resources.

In its most recent annual business planning cycles, ONS has sought to prioritise funding for economic statistics, and has reduced some of its outputs to focus on its core priorities for economic statistics. Again, it would help enhance stakeholder confidence if these decisions were more clearly communicated as part of an overall strategy for delivering economic statistics.

In short, a more engaged and transparent process would assist users of all ONS’s statistics in understanding the trade-offs ONS faces and how it has addressed them.

Action expected from ONS

ES.13 While ONS has responded to the challenges with labour market statistics, stakeholders have expressed frustration with the slow response to data collection quality risks and other quality issues, and the lack of a clear, strategic public response to address them. ONS’s challenges with the Labour Force Survey have damaged users’ confidence in the organisation. However, the quality issues we have identified in this review, while serious and demanding of an urgent response, do not extend across the whole portfolio of outputs.

ES.14 This report sets out requirements for ONS that are aimed at improving the quality of economic statistics and resetting stakeholders’ perception of these statistics through:

• Restoring confidence, by producing a fully resourced plan to recover its social survey operation and reduce risk in its business survey operation.
• Ensuring strategic transparency, by clearly setting out the core purpose of economic statistics and what can be achieved with available funding in its business plan, a strategic plan for economic statistics and a strategic plan for data sources.
• Focusing on the quality of data inputs, by implementing a prioritised rolling programme of regular reviews of individual surveys and other data sources.

Immediate requirements

Requirement 1: It is critical that ONS takes decisive action to restore confidence. ONS should publish a fully resourced plan to recover its social survey operation and reduce risk in its business survey operation to restore the confidence of its users within four weeks of the publication of this review. This plan should set out the risks that continued data quality challenges pose to economic statistics. Given the impact of these challenges on confidence in the statistics system, progress against the action plan should be regularly monitored by the UK Statistics Authority Board and should be publicly reported.

Requirements in the next 3 months

Requirement 2. Align Resources with Core Purposes: The overarching annual ONS business plan should be explicit on how resources are aligned with its core purposes and outputs as a national statistical institute. ONS should implement a more transparent and engaged approach to the way it prioritises across its output of economic statistics. This work should include an annually updated strategic plan for economic statistics, with clear funding allocations and timebound commitments, to increase both transparency and accountability and to facilitate more effective engagement with its stakeholders on prioritisation. ONS’s Strategic business plan: April 2025 to March 2026, published a few days before this interim report, makes an important contribution to this requirement.

Requirement 3. Develop a Vision and Strategy for Data Sources: In addition to the recovery plan and drawing on the overall strategy for economic statistics, ONS should develop and publish a regularly updated vision and strategy for the data sources used to compile its economic statistics. This publication should include a “roadmap” setting out how the use of surveys and administrative (and other non-survey-based) sources will be developed in an integrated way, including the development of methods that combine data sources, as well as any barriers that ONS foresees and the support it needs from others to address them.

Requirement 4. Implement a Systematic Programme of Quality Reviews: ONS should take a more strategic and systematic approach to quality reviews of its data sources. ONS should implement a prioritised rolling programme of regular reviews of individual surveys and other data sources focusing on maintaining quality and considering issues such as the maintenance of samples, validation rules and keeping survey questions updated. ONS should consider how such a programme could be integrated with its existing approach to quality assurance and how quality issues are inter-related with other challenges, including those associated with ensuring appropriate levels of skill and the effectiveness of systems.

Our next steps

ES.15 In the autumn, we will review ONS’s response to this report and publish our overall findings.

ES.16 While this interim report has focused on data sources, the persistent challenges that ONS has faced in recent years in this area, particularly the escalating problems with response rates to household surveys and the limited progress with the use of administrative data, suggest that there may be organisation-wide issues. Although we have not directly looked at organisational culture in this review, and issues of efficiency and effectiveness are beyond the review’s remit, our discussions with ONS staff and users suggest some concern around the management and business processes through which resources are allocated and the ways in which ONS engages with senior stakeholders.

ES.17 As we have been finalising this report, the UK Statistics Authority announced a review of ONS’s performance and culture to be conducted by Sir Robert Devereux. The review is likely to cover the organisation-wide issues, and we will consider its conclusions as we conduct follow-up work to our report.