Under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, Cabinet Office Ministers and Ministers in the Devolved Administrations are responsible for determining, by Order (secondary legislation) in their respective Parliaments, the principles and rules governing pre-release access to official statistics in their final form before publication. These are set out in a series of Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Orders. The UK Statistics Authority will treat these Orders as an integral part of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and assess official statistics for compliance with the provisions of these Orders.
- Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008 sets out the rules and principles relating to the granting of pre-release access to official statistics produced by the UK Government – came into force on 1 December 2008.
- Pre-release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008 sets out the equivalent for official statistics which are wholly Scottish devolved statistics – came into force on 1 December 2008.
- Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order (Northern Ireland) 2009 sets out the equivalent for official statistics which are wholly Northern Ireland devolved statistics – came into force on 1 April 2009.
- Pre-release Access to Official Statistics (Wales) Order 2009 sets out the equivalent for official statistics which are wholly Welsh devolved statistics – came into force on 21 October 2009.
Reviews and updates
Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics – A Review of the Statutory Arrangements (846.2 KB PDF )
Monitoring Brief 1-2012 – Monitoring Update – January 2012 (201.3 KB PDF )
Pre-release access – 2012 update (136.3 KB PDF )