Population and Society

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted how important it is to understand how we are living and engaging in UK society. In our regulatory work, we cover statistics on the size and geographic spread of the population, on the factors driving population change (including births, deaths and migration), and on people’s lifestyles and culture, including sport, language and identity. We want to uphold public confidence in data and statistics in these areas, particularly at this time, while enhancing the public value of the statistics to help ensure a wide range of key decisions are reliably supported.

We are monitoring statistics relating to COVID-19, working with producers of these statistics to ensure the statistics meet the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics, and responding to users queries and concerns on statistical matters. For more information on OSR’s work during the period of the pandemic, visit our dedicated COVID-19 page.

In addition, we are carrying out an assessment of the 2021 Censuses in the UK. In October 2019, we published our first report as part of the assessment. We will continue to review how Census offices are complying with the Code as we move toward Census day and the publication of Census outputs.

We are also monitoring the ONS’s progress, working in partnership across the Government Statistical Service, in using administrative data to transform population and migration statistics. We will consider the impacts of this work on the existing statistics including the Migration Statistics Quarterly Report.

You can find details of our recently published regulatory work on population and society statistics below.

Contact:  Liddy Brankley, Marie McGhee or Annabelle Parkinson