Members in attendance

• Professor Jonathan Haskel (Chair)
• Jonathan Camfield
• Richard Gibson
• Jenny King
• Simon Kirby   
• Jill Leyland
• Tim Pike
• Ellie Price
• Ian Rowson
• Geoff Tily

ONS Secretariat

• Richard Harris

Presenters

• Stephen Burgess
• Tanya Flower
• Luke Michaelides
• Aimee North
• Kevin Sharp
• Stefan Ubovic

ONS observers

• Grant Fitzner
• Richard Heys
• Chris Jenkins
• Chris Payne

1. Introduction

1. Jonathan Haskel (the Chair) welcomed everyone to the Stakeholder Panel meeting.
2. The minutes from the last Stakeholder Panel meeting (25 April) were agreed by the Panel, with the proviso that a line was added to note the importance of members receiving all papers well in advance of the meeting so they had time to digest the contents.
3. In relation to action point 49, Chris Jenkins (CJ) explained that while the plenary session at the Meeting of the Group of Experts on Consumer Price Indices didn’t include discussion on communicating and explaining GEKS-T, he followed up on a bilateral basis with other countries. Having done so, CJ explained that there doesn’t seem to be any wider best practice ONS can draw on as the other countries didn’t have specific examples of communications they could share.
4. In relation to action point 50, CJ explained that ONS had trialled the new version of the CPI bulletin on the website. CJ further explained that ONS had some positive feedback but that the move to the new bulletin would now likely be taking place later on this year rather than in the summer.
5. The Chair noted that apologies had been received from Ashwin Kumar, James Smith and Tom MacInnes.

2. Prioritisation & ONS work programme

1. Stephen Burgess (SB) explained that normal practice would be for the Panel to discuss the prioritisation framework for CPI at this time of year. However, SB further explained that it would also be useful for him to update the Panel on the Devereux Review and the ONS’s plan for economic statistics before describing the impact these will have on Prices Division’s future workplan and priorities. The Panel would then be asked to comment on the scope of the proposed work programme and the relative priorities across the proposed workstreams.
2. SB explained that the Devereux review had detailed some key recommendations for ONS as a whole. The recommendations included the ONS delivering a focussed and consistent effort to improve core statistics, the head of the ONS not being the National Statistician (at least temporarily), and for stakeholders to reflect on the current governance of ONS and the wider statistical system before commenting on whether further legislative changes are required.
3. SB then noted that the ONS’s plan for economic statistics acknowledged the recent successes delivered by Prices Division which included transitioning substantial parts of production away from legacy infrastructure, incorporating administrative datasets (including the transformation of rents data), and further developing deflators and the House Price Index.
4. SB then summarised the milestones that had been set for Prices Division in the plan for economic statistics in terms of consumer prices, house prices, and business prices.
5. SB concluded by explaining that all of the commitments in the economic statistics plan are a high priority but that ONS will have modest resource to deliver other continuous improvements not in the economic statistics plan. These improvements have been assigned to high priority, medium priority and low priority categories (and are included in the slides published alongside these minutes).
6. The Chair raised a question, in the light of the greater focus on business prices in the Economic Statistics Plan, as to whether the terms of reference and composition of the Panel were still appropriate. It was agreed that Jonathan Haskel would discuss further with ONS. Whether any change was needed might depend partly on the amount of methods development work that was expected on business prices and how often feedback would be needed.
7. The Panel discussed the scope of the proposed work programme and following a discussion on the resource required to deliver each workstream, the Panel agreed with the ONS prioritisation.

Action:

Jonathan Haskel to work with ONS to determine whether the Panel’s existing terms of reference are sufficient in the light of the greater focus on business prices development in the Economic Statistics Plan.

3. Basket review

1. Stefan Ubovic (SU) explained that a review of some basket items had been carried out, with a focus on those that were volatile, or where there had been recent changes in tax policy or market structures.
2. SU further explained that the review had led to ten recommendations, which he then summarised.
3. The Panel welcomed the due diligence carried out by ONS and agreed that similar reviews should be carried out in the future, although it was agreed that further discussion was required in terms of how progress on the recommendations should be reported back to the Panel.

Action:

An update will be given at the start of the September Panel on how much resource was associated with each of the “CPI deep dive” recommendations, which of the recommendations could be considered to be ‘quick wins’, which can be completed before March 2026, and how frequently progress updates on the recommendations should be provided to the Panel.

4. Household Costs Indices

1. Luke Michaelides (LM) provided an update on the priority list of development areas agreed by the Panel, with a view to the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) becoming an accredited official statistic.
2. LM confirmed that in September he intended to present on a proposed HCI revisions policy, HCI development plan, a roadmap for accreditation, and a more detailed response to progress on the Panel’s priorities.
3. The Panel welcomed the update and requested that the compilation of elementary aggregates, and owner-occupied housing were included in LM’s presentation in September.

5. Seasonally-adjusted CPI

1. Kevin Sharp (KS) summarised the findings from the report on seasonally-adjusted CPI written by NIESR and explained that Q3 2025 was to be used by ONS for user engagement on methods and internal review and testing, Q4 2025 was to be used to finalise the methods and to plan for implementation within production, and the aim is to publish the first seasonally-adjusted data in March 2026.
2. KS explained that feedback was being sought from the Panel on whether,
   • the direct or indirect approach to seasonal adjustment should be used
   • series that are strongly influenced by policy should be seasonally adjusted
   • time series should be split into three different time periods (1988 to 2000, 2001 to 2014, and 2015 onwards) with revisions only taking place in the latest of these three periods
   • the revisions policy should be on a concurrent, partially concurrent, or current basis
   • the publication and reporting strategy outlined in NIESR’s paper was the correct approach
3. The Panel observed that there are different types of seasonality and that it may be important to distinguish between these. For instance, there is regular ‘organic’ seasonality and as the paper points out there is also policy-induced seasonality. However, the Panel thought there was also policy-orchestrated seasonality which is different from the other two.
4. The Panel agreed that it would be helpful to publish the seasonally-adjusted index, the annual change in the index, the monthly change in the index, and the rate of change over the last three months compared to the same three months the year before.
5. The Panel noted that in the previous agenda item on the basket review some price indices had been identified as being particularly volatile. Some panel members argued that there could be a case for improving collection methods for these items before seasonal adjustment of these indices commenced.
6. The Panel generally agreed with the recommendation relating to how to report the seasonally-adjusted figures, specifically expressing agreement that separate tables should be published as part of the release.

6. House Price Index improvements

1. Aimee North (AN) summarised the forthcoming improvements to be made to monthly imputation in the House Price Index.
2. The Panel welcomed the improvements and asked AN to return to the Joint Panel in September to present impact analysis on RPI and HPI.

7. ADS update

1. Tanya Flower (TF) gave an update on the scanner data parallel run, explaining that the run was progressing well and that monthly curiosity sessions had commenced. TF further explained that ONS were working on analytical tools that would allow production teams to better understand the data. One such tool would allow production teams to understand whether monthly movements were being driven by the ADS grocery retailers or the local collection.
2. TF gave an update on the retailer stratification work, noting that any changes would be made independently of the decision to integrate groceries scanner data into ONS consumer prices statistics. A paper on retailer stratification will be taken to July’s Technical Panel and following feedback from the Technical Panel, further detail will be added to the ONS proposal before being shared with the Stakeholder Panel.
3. TF explained that work was continuing to agree on the form of supplementary outputs to support the move to incorporating groceries scanner data, and the reduced availability of microdata. User engagement sessions are being organised for the late summer to ensure the outputs meet user requirements.
4. TF explained that ONS plan to update the Consumer Prices Technical Manual to reflect the integration of grocery scanner data in March 2026. It is proposed that the new Technical Manual will take the form of a sequence of mini-manuals that bring content relating to similar topics together.
5. The Panel welcomed the progress on the ADS workstreams and encouraged ONS to review their communications plan to ensure they were doing all they could to communicate the methodological changes in advance of March 2026.

Action:

Chris Payne to discuss with ONS communications colleagues whether there were any further steps that could be taken to publicise ONS’s plans, before providing the Chair with a summary of the ADS communications plan.

8. Any other business and summary

1. The Panel requested that details were shared around the ONS review that is taking place following the error in CPI, while taking into account that it may not be possible to table an agenda item on this in September because of how full the agenda is.
   • Action: ONS to share details at the appropriate time of the conclusions of the review that is taking place following the error in CPI.
2. A request was made for powerpoint presentations to be shared with Panel members, either in advance of the meeting or during the meeting using Teams.
   • Action: ONS to reflect on the best way to share powerpoint presentations with members to maximise engagement at Panel meetings.
3.  It was confirmed that the next Stakeholder Panel meeting would be held on Friday 5 September.