This Statement sets out details of additional information about statistical releases that the Statistics Authority will include in Assessment Reports. This additional information will be based on the Authority’s published Statement on Standards for Statistical Releases.
We will include an additional annex (Annex 2) in Assessment Reports. This new annex will give a more detailed account of the various releases of the sets of statistics being assessed (measured against the Standards for Statistical Releases) than is currently practicable in the main body of Assessment Reports.
Where releases are found not to comply with any aspect of the Standards for Statistical Releases we will make a Requirement in the Assessment Report, in much the same way as now, but referring explicitly to the detail included in Annex 2. While Annex 2 will not be a comprehensive or exhaustive analysis of any particular statistical release, it will offer a balanced account of strengths and weaknesses in the releases, and give enough details for producers to apply the observations more generally across their releases.
Annex 2 should be regarded as supplementary guidance in addition to the Requirements made in the Assessment Report. This approach reflects our view of the Standards for Statistical Releases as supplementary guidance to the Code. Implementation of the improvements listed in Annex 2 is therefore not compulsory but in practice, we would expect producers to take account of the material in
Annex 2 in implementing relevant Requirements. Annex 2 will be included in Assessment Reports published from late July 2011.