The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body at arm’s length from government. We have a statutory objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that ‘serve the public good’. The public good includes:
- informing the public about social and economic matters
- assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy
- regulating quality and publicly challenging the misuse of statistics
The collective mission of the official statistics system, set out in the Statistics for the public good strategy, is to provide high quality data and analysis to inform the UK, improve lives and build the future.
Our remit covers the three principal elements of the UK official statistics system:
- the Government Statistical Service (GSS), which is the cross-government community of all those involved in the production of official statistics in the UK
- the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority and the largest producer of official statistics in the UK
- the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) which is the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority. It assesses official statistics for compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics, reports on system-wide issues and on how statistics are used, celebrating when the standards are upheld and challenging publicly when they are not.
A Memorandum of Understanding describes the responsibilities of the Cabinet Office with respect to the UK Statistics Authority, as an independent statutory body.