Performance

Purposes and activity

Statutory framework

The Statistics Board, operating as the UK Statistics Authority (the Authority) was established under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (the Act) and on 1 April 2008 formally assumed its powers. The Authority is an independent statutory body. It operates at arm’s length from government as a non- ministerial department and reports directly to the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The work of the Authority is further defined under the secondary legislation made under the Act by the UK Parliament or devolved legislatures.

Statutory objective

The Authority has 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

Official statistics are for the benefit of society and the economy as a whole; not only in government policy making and the evaluation of government performance, but also informing the direction of economic and commercial activities. Statistics provide valuable data and evidence for analysts, researchers, public and voluntary bodies, enabling the public to hold to account all organisations that spend public money, and informing wider public debate. The Authority is committed to official statistics enabling sound policy, decisions and providing a firm evidence base for decision-making both inside and outside of government.

Statistics for the Public Good

On 16 July 2020, the Authority launched its strategy for the UK official statistics system for the five years 2020 to 2025. The strategy can be found in full on the Authority’s website.

The collective mission of our official statistics system is:

High quality data and analysis to inform the UK, improve lives and build the future.

Functions

The Statistics for the Public Good strategy covers the principal elements of the UK official statistics system for which the Authority has oversight. The Authority provides professional oversight of the Government Statistical Service (GSS), and has exclusive responsibility for its two executive arms, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). The National Statistician also leads the cross-government Analysis Function.

The Government Statistical Service (GSS)

The GSS is a UK network, spread across a whole range of public bodies, including the devolved administrations and UK government departments which produces and analyses statistics. It includes professional statisticians, data scientists, geographers, researchers, economists, analysts, operational delivery staff, IT specialists and other supporting roles. The GSS is also a part of the cross-government Analysis Function, which has built a community of analysts of various professional backgrounds working to provide the evidence base for understanding the biggest challenges of the day. Both the Analysis Function and the GSS are also led by the National Statistician.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS)

The ONS is the Authority’s statistical production function and is part of the GSS. Led by the National Statistician, the ONS is the UK’s internationally recognised National Statistical Institute and largest producer of official statistics. The ONS produces data, statistics and analysis on a range of key economic, social and demographic topics.

Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)

The OSR is the Authority’s independent statutory regulator. Led by the Director General for Regulation, OSR ensures that statistics are produced and disseminated in the public good and aims to increase public confidence in the trustworthiness, quality and value of statistics produced by governments. OSR also reports publicly on system-wide issues and on the way statistics are being used, celebrating when the standards are upheld and challenging publicly when they are not.

The legislation which established the UK Statistics Authority requires strict separation of the functions of production and regulation, where those involved in the production of statistics are not involved in the assessment of statistics against the Code. The Director General for Regulation reports directly to the Chair of the Authority and produces a separate annual performance report. More detail about OSR, including its approach, its governance and an assessment of its effectiveness is set out in the Annex to this document.

Overview

The UKSA Strategy

The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) strategy – Statistics for the Public Good – sets the direction for the UK official statistics system with its overarching mission to deliver:

High quality data and analysis to inform the UK, improve lives and build for the future

The strategy describes four strategic drivers that underpin the mission statement – UKSA must be:

Radical

Radical in taking opportunities to innovate and collaborate, using data for the public good.

Ambitious

Ambitious in setting out to answer the critical research questions the public needs the Government to answer, and informing the decisions that citizens, businesses and civil society take.

Inclusive

Inclusive in its approach to workforce, talent management, and the design of data, statistics and analysis.

Sustainable

Sustainable in delivering a unique service in a way which delivers value for money with lasting benefits and minimises impact on the environment, all through partnership and collaboration.

The UKSA strategy is supported by business plans produced by each constituent part of the statistical system.

The ONS Strategic Business Plan

The ONS Strategic Business Plan, originally published alongside the UKSA Strategy in July 2020, and subsequently updated annually, sets out how ONS will contribute towards delivery of the UKSA strategy. The Strategic Business Plan includes our responses to external challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of living challenge, and the war in Ukraine plus our outputs to inform on issues such as net-zero, levelling up economic opportunity across the country, social mobility, and an ageing population.

The Strategic Business Plan details how the ONS will deliver in line with the four Strategic Drivers – Radical, Ambitious, Sustainable and Inclusive – as set out in the UKSA strategy, working in partnership with the GSS, data providers and the analytical and research community.

The 2023/24 version of the Strategic Business Plan also set out the structure through which we deliver against our commitments. It presented the eight Strategic Objectives supported by delivery tiers made up of our Accountability Framework Objectives (AFOs) and our four transformation programmes:

• Census and Data Collection Transformation Programme (CDCTP)
• Integrated Data Services Programme (IDSP)
• Ambitious, Radical and Inclusive Economic Statistics (ARIES)
• Corporate Services Improvement Programme (CSIP)

Figure 1 below provides a visual representation of the structure showing the alignment from the Strategic Drivers through to delivery.

Figure 1: ONS Strategic Business Plan Taxonomy, 2023/24

Statement about the use of Government Functional Standards

The National Statistician leads the Analysis Function which supports a 16,000 strong community of analysts. The work of the Analysis Function is overseen by the Analysis Function Board (AFB) and the Departmental Directors of Analysis (DDANs), who represent Departments and our wider stakeholders. An Analysis Function People Board subcommittee has also been established in recent years to further strengthen the delivery of people specific priorities.

This governance structure ensures the Function addresses cross-cutting challenges, drawing on the strengths of the analytical professions, and ensures a consistent approach to delivering expert analytical advice across government.

The Analysis Function also plays a key role in delivering the Cabinet Office’s and Ministers’ civil service reform agenda. Over the next three years, the ONS plan for the Analysis Function will support integrated, informed decision-making and efficient service delivery by putting world class analysis in the hands of decision makers. A Functional approach is needed for analysis to pool knowledge, skills and techniques and to ensure that government analysts apply common standards and approaches when this is the right thing to do.

We have made strong progress on delivering the Analysis Function strategy, collaborating closely across government to support the analyst community in delivering better outcomes for the public. The Analysis Function continues to score the highest of any function across all seven dimensions of the annual Functional Quality Survey, which is testament to the significant contribution that analysts across government make in supporting decision making, driving innovation and delivering efficiencies.

In addition to the Analysis Function, the ONS aligns to other functional standards such as Finance, Project Delivery, Human Resources, Communications, Property, Digital, Data and Technology, Security, Commercial, Internal Audit and Counter Fraud, as per the Dear Accounting Office (DAO) Letter dated 30/09/2021. The Letter sets out that all central government departments and their arm’s length bodies should have a plan in place by March 2022 to comply with each functional standard in a way that meets its business needs and priorities.

The OSR business plan

OSR also published its Business Plan in May 2023. This set out the independent role, governance, vision, and priority outcomes and activities for OSR. Performance against the OSR business plan for 2023/24 is set out in the Annex to this document.

Performance analysis

Introduction

We have continued to make significant progress against our radical, ambitious, inclusive and sustainable drivers during 2023/24 – the fourth year of our five-year strategy. We have achieved a great deal, as set out in more detail below, while maintaining our commitment to a sustainable business model.

Throughout 2023/24, we utilised our learning from our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, adapting agile and flexible approaches to respond to urgent issues of the day. We continued to demonstrate our crucial role in informing Government and the public on priority topics including the continuing impacts from the pandemic, inflation, migration, economic growth, employment, and conflicts across the globe. This was alongside delivering our change programmes and our regular quality outputs.

The ONS continued to work alongside and as an integral part of the GSS, collaborating with key stakeholders during development of the Integrated Data Service, in our response to analytical demand on key topics, and in the continuous improvement of our statistics. This approach to delivery will continue to be a key element to achieving the UKSA strategy as we enter its final year.

The Spending Review 2021 (SR21) exercise provided funding certainty for the period 2022/23 to 2024/25. However, we continued to operate in an increasingly constrained financial environment driven primarily by the impacts of inflation. This led to a 2023/24 business planning round heavily focussed on our core priorities and the development of the ONS Efficiency and Savings Plan (ESP) designed to release savings for reinvestment into our core strategic priorities and meet our increased costs.

The following sections provide an overall summary assessment of performance against our strategic objectives and key milestones for 2023/24 as set out in our 2023/24 Strategic Business Plan. We also provide a more detailed narrative highlighting the key achievements in the period by each strategic driver and Strategic Objective (SO).

Summary of performance by strategic objective

The Strategic Objectives were developed as part of the ONS’s initial Strategic Business Plan published in July 2020. They have been reviewed annually and as a result have been iterated and rationalised to maintain relevance to current and expected future operational context, and to support clarity of accountability. Each Strategic Objective contributes to all four Strategic Drivers, with the strongest association shown in the table below.

Performance against the Strategic Objective is monitored monthly through internal governance using the mapping of the underpinning Accountability Framework Objectives (AFOs) to each Strategic Objective as a mechanism to track progress and flag issues. The illustrations  below provide an assessment of the status of each of the eight Strategic Objectives in March 2024.

Key deliverables

Our 2023/24 Strategic Business Plan also set out a high-level timeline of our key milestones for the year. The table below shows the status of these milestones in March 2024.

Overall performance narrative by strategic objective

Radical – Cross cutting analysis and integrated data

Strategic objective 1 – Priority analysis

A key strategic objective which is intrinsically linked to our mission as an organisation is to provide time-critical analysis and statistics on priority economic, social and environmental issues. We have developed our capacity to respond at pace, using our relationships across government and with other partners to provide the data and analysis needed to aid decision makers – whatever the question. Central to the achievement of this objective is the need to develop and maintain the necessary structures, capability and capacity to deliver.

Our Analytical Hub continues to work in tandem with our Data Science Campus and cross-Government partners including the Cabinet Office Joint Data and Analysis Centre to aid in our response to urgent priorities. During the year we responded quickly to provide data and insights across a range of socio-economic themes detailed below.

The ONS continues to respond to emerging and priority topics that the public and government face. We continued to support investigations for those over 50 years old who are leaving the labour force, with further analysis using Census data considering the characteristics of those unemployed. We continued to produce insights into the impact of the cost of living in the UK, including qualitative surveys on specific groups, such as students.

At the turn of the year, working with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and Home Office, we published the results from our Ukrainian Humanitarian Survey, focusing on barriers to work, professions, the private rented sector and independent living. This provided data to inform government work in a range of areas including jobs and careers support, English language classes, access to housing, and support payments to sponsors. The Analytical Hub’s survey work on the humanitarian response won the Government Social Research award and the Analysis in Government impact award in 2024, with judges praising the speed, impact and inclusive nature of the analysis. The third wave of our survey of those entering the UK was published in July 2023 and our latest release surveying sponsors of those hosting Ukrainian refugees was published in October 2023.

We provided support to central government on the potential domestic and international implications of the conflict in the Middle East. This includes the Data Science Campus producing analysis on shipping and using open-source data to explore sentiments in the region and beyond. We responded to several commissions including rapid-turnaround Census figures to support the Home Office’s community cohesion work and Cabinet Office analysis of the domestic social and political implications. Separately, eight ONS analysts have joined the new Crisis Surge Team within the National Situation Centre in the Cabinet Office. They will be available to be loaned at short notice during major incidents and crises to support government’s analytical response, and will gain experience of crisis operations, allowing them to apply this to rapid response work in the ONS.

The ONS published its first insights into public awareness, opinions, and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), ahead of the UK’s Global Summit on AI Safety. Results have been extensively used across government, filling a critical evidence gap in our knowledge of key emerging technologies.

Strategic objective 2 – Priority data

Significant progress was made to move the Integrated Data Service (IDS) into service at a BETA maturity phase. In September 2023, IDS received Digital Economy Act (2017) accreditation for data provision, making IDS the first cloud-native trusted research environment to be accredited for data provision under the legislation and opening the opportunity to scale. The IDS will grow at pace over the remainder of the Programme with a pipeline of additional and transformational capability, data, projects, and users as well as improved and accredited data integration and cross-sector collaboration enabled through cloud technologies that will drive significant uptake.

The total number of users, datasets and relevant projects within the IDS has increased and currently stands at 125 cumulative users, 104 datasets (of which 14 are indexed for rapid data linkage) and 20 projects respectively. Analytical projects included improving timely access to health data, working with National Health Service (NHS) England on linked health data, engaging the Chief Coroner to obtain toxicology data for drug-related deaths, and improving timeliness of our maternity data in response to ministerial priorities at Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Several projects also explored the use of linked data, such as on health drivers of inactivity and inequalities in accident and emergency department attendance.

The first research report based on analysis in IDS has recently been produced by the ONS in partnership with Administrative Data Research (ADR) Wales and Welsh Government, to explore differences between estimates of Welsh language ability in Census 2021 and household surveys. This is in line with the Welsh Language Strategy, Cymraeg 2050.

We have identified options for accessing the Advanced Passenger Information data from Home Office so that we can assess its ability to replace the International Passenger Survey data in migration estimates for British Nationals.

In January 2024, the Data Science Campus launched the International Data Masterclass, an open online course aimed at building data skills in leaders in global governments and the public sector. Launch events took place in Rwanda and Ghana with wider user roll-out planned in collaboration with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the United Nations Statistics Division.

Ambitious – Inclusive, quality, coherence, accessibility and timeliness of our core statistics

Strategic Objective 3 – Quality National Statistics

In November, we published a suite of population and international migration releases which discussed the main drivers for migration to the UK, explained the reasons why we update our estimates of international migration and why we are transforming the population and migration statistical system. We went on to explain more around how we are refining and improving methods to produce admin-based population estimates in our latest published research article update. We have now requested an assessment of admin-based population estimates from the OSR with a view to the outputs becoming accredited official statistics.

The UK Statistics Authority, on the advice of the National Statistician, will make a recommendation to HM Government on the future of population and migration statistics, early in 2024/25. This follows a public consultation that ran from June 2023 to October 2023 and will detail how the ONS should produce statistics about population and migration in England and Wales in the future, based on user need. An analysis of the consultation responses will be published alongside the recommendation.

In April 2023, ONS experts attended the United Nations meeting for the Group of Experts on National Accounts, leading sessions on the impact of migration on the National Accounts, the use of real-time indicators, and the impact of high inflation.

In October 2023, the ONS hosted the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Conference of European Statisticians Bureau. The Bureau directs statistical work across the UNECE region and beyond, identifying upcoming opportunities and potential challenges. The ONS presented work on alternative or ‘supplementary’ population bases as well as data ethics and social acceptability.

In February 2024, we published improved research and development statistics following an end-to-end survey transformation. The changes included a ten-fold increase in the sample, online data collection, more detailed information being collected and new methods and processing systems. A webinar was held on release day with over 160 people attending to hear about the work and the new insights from the data.

Our most recent statistics on bullying and online experiences of children were published in March 2024, alongside two other articles: ‘Crime in England and Wales: Victims Characteristics’, and our explainer narrative ‘Crime Trends in England and Wales and how we measure them’. As part of this series of releases, we also announced an internal review of the dissemination and communication of ONS crime statistics.

Strategic Objective 4 – Transformed Economic and Social Statistics

As part of plans to make the ONS’s crime statistics more inclusive, December 2023 saw the publication of a report exploring how to better incorporate data on crimes against care home residents; this is part of our work on victimisation of the non-household population. It focussed on what sources of administrative data are currently available and whether the Crime Survey for England and Wales should be extended to cover care homes.

The Blue and Pink Books were successfully published in October 2023, with improved estimates of education-related travel exports and the latest data and improved methods for measuring the UK economy. Ahead of this in September, the ONS published Quarterly National Accounts, Sector Accounts, Balance of Payments and related releases, incorporating important developments and improvements to sources, methods, data production systems and outputs. We have used new methods which have focused initially on a small number of multi-national enterprises, aimed at better accounting for these globalisation impacts. We have introduced improved methods and data sources to estimate trade in services’ travel deflators. We have also improved the classification of non-profit institutions serving households and improved measurement of the higher education sector.

The Public Service Productivity Review (commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Spring 2023) delivered its first milestone with new experimental baselines for long-term growth estimates, and ‘nowcasts’ for 2021/22 published in November2023. The ONS launched the Time Use Survey for Public Sector workers in January 2024, capturing detail on administrative burden placed on key workers, the results of which informed the Spring Budget 2024.

In December 2023, the ONS published the first quarterly publication of the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) looking at households’ experience of inflation. This was launched alongside webinar sessions to showcase and support user understanding of these statistics. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many welcoming this work and highlighting the importance of these statistics.

As part of our Beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) programme of work, our UK Measures of National Well-being were updated (the first after our major review) with a total of 58 measures giving a comprehensive understanding of how the nation feels.

We delivered some key milestones from the Ambitious, Radical, Inclusive Economic Statistics (ARIES) Programme including publishing transformed rents statistics as a standalone regular monthly publication in March 2024 which were then included into headline measures of consumer price inflation. The new statistics provide a greater level of granularity in rental price statistics, including local authority estimates, and estimates by property type and number of bedrooms. We also incorporated new second-hand car statistics, improving both the quality and granularity of these estimates, and moving a large proportion of monthly processing for consumer price statistics from legacy platforms to the cloud.

Sustainable – Building a sustainable and efficient business model

Strategic Objective 5 – Future tools

We continue to put users at the heart of everything that we do so they can find, understand, and explore our data and insight to make decisions at a national, local and individual level. We are committed to ensuring our statistics and analysis are clear, concise and can be easily understood and used by our broad range of audiences.

We have continued to build on the success of our award-winning Census products, implementing innovative interactive tools to support dissemination of Census data and maximise the use of data for the public good. An example was the use of the “create a custom dataset” tool which was used to help brief ministers on the characteristics of the Sudanese-born population in response to conflict in Sudan. There has also been positive user feedback to our “create a population group profile” tool that allows users to see how a selected population group compares to the whole population of England and Wales across a variety of measures including health, education and employment.

A shopping prices comparison tool was launched in May 2023 to help people see how the average prices of hundreds of individual shopping items are changing. The tool had more than 650,000 views in the first few days and was embedded in the BBC website after widespread media coverage.

The ONS used a local statistics explorer in April 2023, working in partnership with DLUHC, to allow users to explore data on their local area and compare with other areas.

Applying valuable lessons from the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS), which resulted in over two million completed questionnaires and 2.9 million samples, the ONS re-utilised its online platform to deliver the Winter COVID-19 Infection Study in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency. The study achieved an 80 per cent response rate from 130,000 participants. The results have raised awareness of COVID-19 infection levels, informed public health messaging, and have enabled understanding of winter pressures and their potential impact on the NHS.

To further embed the legacy from the CIS we have initiated a Pandemic Preparedness Toolkit project (funded by the Wellcome Trust), working with international partners to develop a toolkit for National Statistics Institutes and associated Health Agencies to support effective health surveillance programmes, ensuring they have impact with policy makers and wider stakeholders. Nepal, Malawi and Argentina accepted our invitation to become project partners and draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) were sent to the National Statistics Office (NSOs) of each country. The project is working across these countries and with a global network of stakeholders to build on the ONS’s successes and lessons learned during the covid pandemic; including tools and methods for data collection, analysis, data science, statistical leadership and cross-boundary collaboration for health development.

Strategic Objective 6 – Sustainable business model

The ONS achieved its £16.8m efficiency and cost reduction target in 2023/24, as set out in the ONS Efficiencies and Savings Plan (ESP). Our ESP is based on our submission to HM Treasury in response to the Efficiencies and Savings Review announced in November 2022. Measures contributing to meeting this target included streamlining our outputs, automation, revising our commercial approaches, and reducing our corporate services costs. Our ESP workstreams have delivered quality improvements and have helped mitigate risks, while releasing savings for reinvestment into our core strategic priorities.

As part of our approach to managing within a reduced funding environment and the impacts of inflation, we are relying increasingly on internal deployment of our existing staff – using the skills and capabilities we have in a more flexible way to deliver key priorities. Overall, we reduced our Full Time Equivalent staffing levels by 460 in 2023/24. An increased focus on deployment has led to broader development of and agility within our workforce. We do continue to recruit externally where required, for example, to fill roles requiring scarce or critical skills.

Inclusive – Building inclusivity into everything we do

Strategic Objective 7 – Accessible Outputs

We have made improvements to the external communications of our statistical outputs, with additional media briefing sessions, webinars and new innovative pre-recorded video content which gained traction across our social media channels.

Communications and Digital Publishing’s new ‘voices’ content approach brought to life Census 2021 statistics on the centenarian population in England and Wales. Through partnering with Age UK, we were able to speak to centenarians who shared their stories alongside the statistics in our article, achieving positive media reactions.

We launched a new interactive tool in October 2023 that allowed users to see how a selected population group compares to the whole population of England and Wales across a variety of measures including health, education and employment. It was the first tool that allowed non-technical users to extract insights from multivariate Census 2021 data, previously only available in spreadsheet form. Social media engagement and customer feedback were incredibly positive.

In March 2024, we launched the Beta for our Explore Subnational Statistics service which allowed users to find, visualise, compare and download subnational data easily.  Our first output on short term lets, through our partnership with AirBnB, Expedia and Bookings.com, will be published shortly.

Our statistics and data literacy collaboration with BBC and Micro:bit Education Foundation has continued to develop with the launch of the Playground Survey project for primary school children. We are also contributed articles about data science and statistics which are being published on the BBC Teach website.

Strategic Objective 8 – One ONS culture

A mid-term review of the UKSA strategy evaluated what our existing drivers meant in 2023 and looked ahead at challenges for the coming period, suggesting a focus on themes such as effective communication of statistics; improving awareness of statistics; improving statistical literacy in partnership with others; and the emerging role of both automation and artificial intelligence within the statistical and analytical system.

In June 2023, it was announced that the UK Statistics Authority (including the Office for National Statistics and Office for Statistics Regulation) would be subject to an independent review (carried out by Professor Denise Lievesley CBE) as part of the Cabinet Office’s Public Bodies Review programme. The Review centred around the themes of efficacy, governance, accountability and efficiency and was conducted following a public call for evidence and conversations with Authority colleagues, users and producers of official statistics across the statistical system and beyond. The Review was published alongside the Government’s response on 12 March 2024 and contained a number of recommendations for the Authority and for the Government based on its findings. On the day of its publication, UK Statistics Authority Chair, Sir Robert Chote, released a statement welcoming the report, in particular the recommendations on data sharing, improving social survey response rates, and user engagement. We look forward to implementing those relevant to ONS.

We were awarded a further three years of official accreditation as a Disability Confident Leader recognising our inclusive approach towards colleagues with disabilities, inclusive practices in recruitment and inclusive working environment.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) People Management Awards 2023 shortlisted the ONS in the Best Flexible Working Initiative category, recognising our hard work and colleague-centred approach to being an inclusive organisation with a great working environment. The ONS were highly commend at the CIPD Awards Wales in the category of ‘Best Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative’. This commendation recognised the incredible work on the development and embedding of the Inclusion, Culture and Wellbeing Dashboard, as well as the roll out of our team learning Inclusive Interactive Experience; all of which aim to further our UKSA strategic principle of ‘Inclusive’.

Furthermore, the ONS was recognised by the Civil Service Commissioner as highly commended for its recruitment processes, recognising the effectiveness of our processes and candidate experience for the second consecutive year.

ONS was short-listed for two awards at the recent Government Project Delivery Awards. The Census and Data Collection Transformation Programme (CDCTP) team won the Project Delivery Award, and a second nomination was received for “Advancing the Project Delivery Profession”.

Summary

The above sections shine a small light on our performance during 2023/24, the fourth year of our five-year strategy. We have continued to strike the right balance between delivering and improving our core outputs, building foundations for our future and responding to priority demands to inform government policy and UK society. We have been able to do this by continuing to be agile, flexible and collaborative, reallocating resources to our highest priorities through robust business planning and building sustainability by exceeding our 2023/24 Efficiencies and Savings Plan target.

Challenges and external impacts

This section highlights our response to some of the challenges and external factors we have faced in order to continue delivering against the radical, ambitious, inclusive, and sustainable drivers set out in the UKSA strategy.

Staff retention and industrial action

Our People Plan clearly sets out the importance of our colleagues to the delivery of our strategy and business plan. The challenge to attract and retain critical skillsets continues to be a priority for ONS and others across government, with national labour market supply issues, in particular for the Government Digital and Data profession, but also analytical and project delivery disciplines. To address these challenges, we have established more innovative, flexible resourcing models and an approach to growing our own talent during the period to ensure we can continue to deliver our ambitions.

The impacts of inflation both on the organisation and all of our people individually has presented further challenge. To try to alleviate the impacts we have continued to provide support to our staff through our wellbeing hub that includes financial and mental health support, guidance and contacts. In addition, we were swift to ensure processing of the cost-of-living support payment to all colleagues, alongside securing additional discount offerings through our partnership with EdenRed.

Planned industrial action has impacted us during 2023/24. Our business continuity plans have been pivotal in ensuring that the impacts on our operations and delivery against our ambition was limited.

Data sharing complexities

The recent Lievesley Review concluded that the UKSA’s efficacy is hampered by the systemic and cultural barriers to responsible data sharing between government departments making two recommendations on this subject.  Firstly, that the centre of government, led by Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and No. 10 actively work to resolve the systemic, often cultural, barriers to data sharing between departments. Secondly, that the ONS takes action to ensure that the purpose, scope and requirements of the Integrated Data Service (IDS) are clearly communicated and that the needs and concerns of departmental data owners are sufficiently understood.

Data sharing is a complex area, which the Central Digital and Data Office holds policy responsibility for. ONS, as the lead delivery partner for the IDS, covers many aspects of implementation alongside managing an administrative data portfolio of over 2,000 datasets for ONS analysts and over 120 datasets for external researchers, including many cross-government linked assets. ONS is continuing to work towards an administrative data-based census, and the breadth and depth of the use of administrative data, as an alternative or complementary to surveys, is now a critical operating dependency.  Unlike direct data collection via surveys, administrative or alternative data supplies are not owned by ONS meaning that there is a key dependency on the provision of ONS outputs by external parties like other government departments and data suppliers.

Public perception

The ONS has been publicly challenged during the year on a number of important topics where our statistics are of high interest or where they inform topical debate, such as GDP estimates, gender identity statistics and excess deaths statistics. The challenges faced have highlighted the need for ONS to clearly explain, to the widest possible audiences, the inherent uncertainty in statistical estimates and the need for periodic revision, alongside guidance for their use, whilst at the same time underlining the reliability and impartiality of our statistical outputs.

Response rates

Falling response rates for social surveys, which is an international trend, have presented an ongoing challenge this year with our Labour Force Survey particularly impacted. We remain committed to clearly and transparently communicating the uncertainties in our labour market statistics while work progresses to increase response rates and transition to our transformed survey.

Financial challenges

Achieving our financial objectives for the period has meant that we have needed to focus our resources on our highest priority activities. Managing within this constrained environment has meant that we have not achieved everything that we had originally intended to achieve as set out in the overall performance summary sections of this document.

Our ongoing risks are described in the Governance Statement.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are disaggregated by Strategic Driver and complement the progress reporting against our strategic objectives (as set out in the previous section) through our internal governance. Our performance against the KPIs for 2023/24 is set out below.

Radical

Ambitious

Inclusive

Sustainable

Looking ahead

Our strategic objectives have been replaced by five Priority Outcomes for 2024-2025 to further align ONS business planning with best practice across government departments. The Outcomes are presented in the 2024/25 Strategic Business Plan and ensure we can deliver our statutory functions, have the greatest impact for users while also enabling us to drive forward our radical and ambitious approaches to modernise how we work.

To ensure that our Strategy remained relevant, we held a mid-term Strategy Review involving key stakeholders and consultation across the statistical system. The outcome has helped drive our future priorities and planning.

Our 2024/25 Key Milestones can be found in our 2024/25 Strategic Business Plan. They contribute to delivery of our priority outcomes and will require ongoing engagement across wider government for delivery, for example in relation to data sharing.

Resources and organisation

Financial management

We complied with all HM Treasury expenditure control approvals processes and managed the standard annual fiscal events within the required timescales. Moreover, we successfully managed within our financial control totals as set by Parliament for 2023/24.

Spending Review 2021 (SR21) provided us with a multi-year settlement over the three financial years 2022/23 through to 2024/25. The settlement provides funding certainty and supports the ongoing delivery of our strategy through a continuation of core funding plus specific programme funding allocations.

Whilst we have funding certainty, the overall level of funding received during 2023/24 reduced compared with 2022/23. This combined with a significant increase in costs driven by high inflation has led to a sharp focus on prioritisation, cost control and delivery of our Efficiency Savings Plan (ESP) to live within our budgets this year. The impact has been most pronounced across our core funding where budgets have remained unchanged throughout the SR21 period.

As part of our 2023/24 financial planning processes, we needed to re-distribute circa £25m from lower to higher order priority activities. Our Efficiency Savings Plan delivered efficiencies and cost savings of £17.8m in 2023/24 exceeding our target of £16.8m. As part of our cost control measures, we reduced our overall FTE by 460 and reduced non-salaries expenditure as a percentage of total expenditure from 37% in 2022/23 to 29% in 2023/24. Delivery of our Efficiency Savings Plan (ESP) was critical to enable us to free up the necessary financial bandwidth to meet our increased costs – particularly relating to salaries which included a circa 5.5% average pay award and one-off non-consolidated payment of £1,500 per FTE in year.

To enable cash expenditure ahead of the passage of the 2023/24 Supplementary Estimate the Authority obtained a £28.5m contingent fund advance. This was repaid in full when Royal Assent was granted on 2023/24 Supplementary Estimate in March 2024. The Office for Statistics Regulation’s (OSR’s) budget forms part of the Authority’s wider accounts and whilst it is not disclosed separately in this report, defined parameters are applied in internal reporting. The OSR budget for 2023/24 was £3.37m.

Financial outcome

Our total net resource expenditure increased from £352.4m in 2022/23 to £362.9m in 2023/24. This figure is net of income but includes ring-fenced resource expenditure (depreciation). The commensurate budget for 2023/24 with which to compare was £372m. The increase year on year is due largely to additional funding approved by HM Treasury for expenditure on Future Population Migration Statistics and Public Sector Productivity Statistics.

Taking the position gross of income receipts our resource expenditure figures decreased from £576.9m in 2022/23 to £397.5m in 2023/24. This decrease relates to the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) ending with a much smaller Winter COVID-19 Infection Study being funded by UK Health Security Agency. Our income has significantly decreased as a result from £224.6m in 2022/23 to £34.6m in 2023/24 due to the CIS funding coming to an end.

Our total net capital expenditure decreased from £35.7m in 2022/23 to £23.4m in 2023/24. The commensurate budget for 2023/24 with which to compare was £23.8m. Our capital expenditure is made up of £9.9m investment in development of assets, with £13.5m of expenditure classified as capital expenditure under the European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA10). The latter is not classified as capital expenditure under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The overall decrease in capital expenditure is due to high IFRS 16 capitalised costs in 2022/23 with the fit-out costs related to the relocation of the London office. There were no major leases entered into in 2023/24.

Further information on our financial outturn is provided in the Financial Summary section.

People capability

The Authority’s approach to people capability centres around mitigating against the risk that the Authority is unable to develop, deploy and retain individuals with critical skills. Throughout 2023/2024, the Authority has looked to mature its skills development approach to ultimately ensure the Authority has the right skills in the right place at the right time as well as building critical skills for a sustainable future.

In 2022, the Authority launched Skills that Count; an organisation wide strategy that highlights the shift from a strong, formal learning delivery focus to a more strategic skills development approach. This was further matured throughout the 2023/24 financial year to develop an ‘agile capacity and capability’ programme of work that reframes our current offer, with a stronger focus on developing and deploying critical skills to deliver against the Authority’s priority statistical outputs. Its aim is to take a more agile, informed and efficient approach to the way we develop and deploy talent in the organisation. The work is organised into three distinct workstreams:

1. Workstream 1: We will capture the skills our people have to make more informed decisions about how we deploy talent and focus capability building.
2. Workstream 2: We will encourage an agile approach to learning that aligns with critical skills gaps to enable fluid movement of talent to the right place at the right time.
3. Workstream 3: We will ensure we are building an efficient and sustainable deployment and skills offer to enable movement to the highest priority roles.

Delivery against this programme of work will continue throughout the next financial year and will shift our focus to a much more agile approach to strategic skills development in the organisation.

To continue to secure our future, the UKSA continues to invest in entry talent pipelines with a particular focus on internally retaining and reskilling for skills that are critical to delivery of statistical outputs. We continue to engage with Fast Stream, apprenticeships and government-wide Life Chances schemes, and in particular during 24/25 we will look to use apprenticeships to build internal capability across critical skill areas.

We also continue to build and mature our capability approach for the Government Analysis Function, with a particular focus in the last year on developing analytical literacy across the non-analyst population as part of the Cabinet Secretary’s ‘One Big Thing’ push to upskill all Civil Servants in data and analysis skills. Other achievements in the cross-government delivery space include the launch of the function’s first development programme for underrepresented groups and a dedicated resourcing hub to enable more fluid movement of analysts to government priorities.

Corporate responsibility

Anti-corruption and anti-bribery measures

The Authority is committed to upholding high standards of honesty and integrity in all its activities and continues to work on its commitments regarding counter-fraud, bribery and corruption. All staff are required to act with honesty, integrity and to safeguard the public resources they are responsible for, with mandatory training (provided by Civil Service Learning) on counter fraud, bribery, and corruption. The Authority operates a zero-tolerance approach to fraud, with all cases of irregularity investigated and dealt with appropriately.

The Authority’s Counter Fraud Team maintains a Fraud, Bribery and Corruption policy available to all staff via the internal intranet. The policy establishes clear expectations in terms of roles and responsibilities and what processes they need to follow to report any concerns regarding fraud, bribery, and corruption.  The Counter Fraud Team have developed a Counter Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Strategy to support the Authority in minimising fraud, bribery, and corruption over the next five years. The team undertakes a fraud risk assessment, involving fraud workshops and training sessions, to identify where the Authority may be susceptible to fraud and to ensure proportionate controls are in place.

The Counter Fraud Team also carries out an assessment against the Government Functional Standards – GovS 013: Counter Fraud. These assessments are reviewed bi-annually and contribute to the counter fraud workplan and supports the identification of proactive fraud work led by the Counter Fraud Officer, such as targeted training and in-depth reviews. Counter fraud reports are provided at least twice a year to the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. The Counter Fraud Team has not identified any material fraud for the period.

All senior leaders in the organisation – interpreted here as members of the Senior Civil Service – are required to sign a declaration of interests and confirm a statement on related parties. In addition, procurement staff will complete a conflict-of-interest declaration for major (Gold and Silver Contracts) procurements (Gold and Silver contracts). All employees must declare all relevant outside interests.

An ongoing register is maintained of all hospitality and gifts offered to Authority staff. All staff are made aware of the civil service rules and the internal policy around acceptance of hospitality or gifts including the requirement to declare any offer. This register was presented to the Authority’s Audit and Risk Assurance Committee in June 2024 to demonstrate adherence to the policy.

Other information in the public interest

Responding to members of the public

There have been zero complaints in 2023/24 (2022/23 zero) about the Authority raised via the Parliamentary Ombudsmen.

Whistleblowing arrangements

It is important the Authority’s work environment offers a safe, inclusive, and supportive place to work; where everyone feels comfortable to speak up if they experience or witness anything that concerns them at work. The Authority’s Whistleblowing and Raising a Concern policy provides assurance on the visibility, accessibility and understanding of the approach to ‘speaking up’ and is a core element of the Authority’s Speak Up Framework.  The Speak Up Framework enables navigation between the Resolution Policy for concerns related to inappropriate behaviour and unfair treatment, and the Whistleblowing policy for concerns related to breaches of the Civil Service Code, suspected illegal activity, or fraud. Several communication and engagement events take place throughout the year to maintain awareness of the Framework, including the annual ‘Speak Up’ week in the autumn, championed by a senior leader and consisting of all colleague communications and the provision of learning interventions.

Respect for human rights

UKSA fully complies with the Human Rights Act 1998.

The realisation of human rights correlates with the availability of sound official statistics. Statisticians play a critical role in supporting evidence- based policy and measuring civil, economic, political, and social rights. In accordance with internationally accepted standards, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the dissemination of relevant information is essential to meet peoples’ right to information and delivering on related entitlements to trustworthy statistics. Upholding rights, such as the rights to privacy and to be registered as well as the rights of statisticians themselves is vital to ensure robustness and independence in official statistical systems.

The Authority recognises these challenges and has established a clear Statement of Principles to ensure that we:

• exercise our statutory responsibilities in a fair, proportionate and accountable way, with due regard for principles of privacy and appropriate degrees of internal and external scrutiny;
• work in a collaborative, transparent and fair manner with data suppliers, civil society, and the public, responding to any concerns or opportunities as they arise; and
• reinforce our full accountability to the UK Parliament and the devolved legislatures in exercising our statutory responsibilities.

Researchers, statisticians and data scientists should demonstrate compliance with the UK Statistics Authority’s ethical principles through use of the Ethics Self-Assessment Tool and/or consultation with the National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee.  The UK Statistics Authority’s Centre for Applied Data Ethics was established in February 2021 with the aim of being a world leader in the field of applied data ethics. The Centre has developed an ethics self-assessment tool that enables staff to quickly assess their use of data against the UKSA’s ethical principles and identify and mitigate ethical risk.

The Authority also recognises the ways in which internationally accepted and domestic legislation provide further effects to the human rights, protections, and freedoms guaranteed to its workforce. The Authority is committed to upholding the key human rights that intersect with the employment relationship through workplace policies and practices developed in collaboration with its workforce and official consultation channels to maintain the principles of dignity, fairness, respect, and equality. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of colleagues’ voluntarily-disclosed personal information, as per General Data Protection Regulation principles
• ensuring colleagues are aware of their right to join one of our formally recognised unions
• underpinning our work with the commitments outlined in our Inclusion and Diversity Plan that extend over the Authority’s remit as an employer and leader within the statistics profession within government
• identifying and overcoming perceived biases and disadvantages through the completion of an Equality Impact Assessment where required.

As an employer, our inclusion and diversity plan, recruitment practices, and wider employment policies all fully comply with the Human Rights Act.  Inclusion is a strategic priority for the Authority, and further information on our policies and practice in this space can be found in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion section.

Sustainable development

It is the policy of the UK Statistics Authority (including the Office for National Statistics, its Executive Office) to conduct its operations in a manner that reflects a commitment to the protection of the environment, embeds the principles and priorities of the Government’s sustainable development strategy and complies with environmental laws and regulations.

Our Sustainable Development Policy states this will be met by

• achieving continual improvement in environmental performance;
• considering the environmental impact of our operations and prevent pollution and reduce carbon emissions;
• aiming to meet the targets (KPIs) established by the Greening Government Commitments;
• meeting all environmental legislative requirements; and
• complying with sustainable reporting requirements

Environmental performance

The Government’s Greening Commitments (GGC) have challenged us to reduce the environmental impact of our estate and operations.  This section and the table below present our progress against these KPIs and targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon and waste, on a yearly basis with the goal of net zero by 2050. Please note the current GGC period is 2021 to 2025, with our baseline period set from 2017/2018.

There was a change to flight data requirements in 2022-23, from number of flights to kilometres travelled on international flights. To ensure accurate comparison, we have converted the baseline figure into kilometres to allow tracking through the period.

Summary for 2023/2024

The table above shows that in the year 2023/24 the Authority failed to meet its targets on waste recycled, and international flights.

In relation to our international flights, ONS was successful in receiving its own Official development assistance (ODA) funding for the first time as part of SR21; this saw its funding increase with a primary objective of increasing the number of countries ONS supports with statistical capacity building and modernisation. The expansion of the programme has therefore resulted in the increase in the amount of travel that the business undertakes to support development activity. Over the next few years we expect to see the amount of travel to increase further. This would be for two reasons:

• ONS International Development Project has successfully secured additional funding of 5.4 million over the next 5 years to support a £200 million FCDO programme on demography and sexual reproductive health. This will see ONS working in other countries.
• ONS’s leadership has set out their ambitious vision for an expanded international development project and that any future SR bid should reflect this ambition. Were such a future ambitious bid being successful, this would likely also result in an increase in ONS international travel.

Our recycling rates are lower than predicted, which is wholly because we send a large proportion (39%) of our waste to be converted to energy, which does not have a reporting section currently in the GGC reports, this is reflected in the 0% to Landfill but only 61% Recycled.  A new waste segregation process is being implemented in line with Welsh legislation and will support to further reduce waste and increase recycling in line with our targets.

Reduce our emissions

The Authority has been tasked with reducing its overall emissions by 38% and direct emissions by 43%, as part of the GGC commitments.

The forecast for 2023/24 is showing a 65% reduction in GHG Emissions and a 90% reduction in Direct Building Emissions. This trend can be attributed to reducing the size of our estate and sustainability investments carried out in recent years.

The GGC also challenges the Authority to reduce domestic flights by 30% against the new baseline figures from 2017/2018. The Authority has a travel policy which mandates that the cheapest method of transport should be employed for any journey, which could encourage domestic air travel between the Southeast, Northeast and Scotland and Northern Ireland. However, the 2023/24 period is forecast to show a marked decrease in domestic flights, tracking well ahead of target. This has largely been attributed to greater accountability and approvals of domestic flights. In reference to international flights, there is an increase in travel overseas due to a large expansion in the international division within ONS.

Improve our waste management

All information communication technology (ICT) equipment is disposed of via an established contract which helps ensure that all redundant ICT equipment is re-used or recycled responsibly.

The Authority is forecast to successfully reduce its overall waste by 59% against the baseline figures which target a reduction of 15%. The Authority is also forecast to reduce paper use by 69% which improves again on previous year’s figures.

Water use

In 2023/2024, water consumption is forecast to reduce by 22% against the baseline, exceeding the target of 8%. Despite seeing an increase in the number of colleagues attending each of our sites compared to last year, we continue to see further reductions largely due to investing in rectifying leaks across our water mains and distribution networks.

Sustainable procurement

The Authority’s standard Terms and Conditions requires all suppliers to comply with our Sustainable Development Policy, which includes, but is not limited to, the conservation of energy, water, wood, paper and other resources, a reduction in waste, the phasing out of the use of ozone depleting substances and the minimisation of the release of greenhouse gases, volatile organic compounds and other substances damaging to health and the environment.

Building on changes to procurement policy, the Authority has been able to fully embrace social value within a tender, placing it as a significant, mandated element of any evaluation. Key to the success of the implementation of social value is the ongoing work with our supply base to develop specifications and requirements that have sustainability at their heart.

The Authority extensively uses Public Sector Framework arrangements collaboratively managed by government organisations such as the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and the Government Digital Services’ (GDS). The CCS and GDS frameworks aim to encourage small and medium sized enterprises and local businesses to bid for work with support available to them if required. The Authority continues to support the engagement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across our contract base.

The requirements of the Government Buying Standards (GBS) are issued to the Commercial Services team on a quarterly basis via the Commercial Update, which is a comprehensive review of all Procurement news and legislation. The quarterly updates also provide information from across the Commercial Team such as data from the Cabinet Office approved Commercial Pipeline as these assist the Team in reviewing opportunities that may be of interest to smaller or local business, ensuring appropriate timetables and market engagement are utilised.

Food and catering

All contractors are required to adhere to our Sustainable Development Policy, but Covid Secure arrangements have impacted this with the re-introduction of packaging that had previously been eradicated from the service. Over the past year we have worked with the catering providers to eradicate single use plastics where possible, as the controls in place during the pandemic have been removed from the Authority offices.

Sustainable construction

The Authority’s refurbishment and construction works are designed and built with the objective of improving the performance of the estate, and in so doing contribute to the achievement of Greening Government Commitments targets. For example, this has included the installation of LED sensor light fittings as standard, low flow taps and carpets with recycled backing. All contractors are required to complete a sustainability questionnaire used as part of the tender process and are required to source materials in line with the GBS.

Our Evolving the Workplace programme has reused existing furniture where possible, and any surplus has been given to community organisations and charities with any residual items planned for sustainable recycling through specialist providers.

Biodiversity

The Authority complies with The Environment (Wales) Act 2016, Section 6 on Biodiversity. It does not have any responsibility for Sites of Special Scientific Interest but takes such action as it can to promote, conserve and enhance biodiversity for example by specification of environmentally friendly measures in its ground’s maintenance contract.

Climate change adaptation

The Authority’s Sustainable Development Action Plan considers the long-term implications of its operations in relation to climate change. This Action Plan is updated yearly and assesses any risks of climate change, how the estate may require necessary adaptation, is robust in the face of changing weather, extreme events and sea level rises from climate change. Business Continuity uses scenario-based exercises to plan for events including any potential effects of extreme weather on our estate.

Sustainable governance and decision making

Our Sustainable Development Policy and Action Plan are embedded within our overall governance and decision making. Since 2021, when our Environmental Champions’ Group was initiated (EnSus), many improvement projects have been identified, elevated and presented to senior management for approval.

Rural proofing

Our estate is not positioned in rural areas, nor do the estate’s operational policies affect rural areas.

Task Force on climate-related financial disclosure statement

ONS has reported on climate-related financial disclosures consistent with HM Treasury’s TCFD-aligned disclosure application guidance which interprets and adapts the framework for the UK public sector. ONS has complied with the TCFD recommendations and recommendations disclosures around:

• Governance
• Metrics and targets

This is in line with the central governments TCFD-aligned disclosure implementation timetable. ONS plans to make disclosures for Strategy, Risk Management and Metrics and Targets disclosures (a) and (c) in future reporting periods in line with the central government implementation timetable.

In 2015 the FSB established the TCFD to develop recommendations for more effective climate-related disclosures to promote more informed decisions and, in turn, enable stakeholders to understand better the concentrations of carbon-related assets and exposures to climate-related risks.

Recommendations published by the Task Force in 2017 proposed:

• four widely adoptable recommendations across four thematic areas (Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, and Metrics and Targets)
• eleven recommended disclosures structured around the thematic areas, representing the core elements of the organisation’s operations. The disclosures are intended to interlink and inform each other
• general and sector-specific guidance for applying the framework
• seven key principles for effective disclosure:
  • relevant
  • specific and complete
  • clear, balanced, and understandable
  • consistent over time
  • comparable across the sector, industry, or portfolio
  • reliable, verifiable, and objective
  • timely

The TCFD recommendations have been adopted by a range of organisations in the private sector and this document will demonstrate the adoption as part of the public sector adoption as part of global best practice.

Reporting process

An Integrated Performance Report is provided to the Portfolio and Investment Committee (a subcommittee of the Executive Committee) for each of its meetings, which includes performance tracking of our GGCs. In terms of strategic risks there are no strategic risks relating to sustainability and environment including climate change.

Reporting structure

The UKSA Sustainable Development Policy is one of the main supporting documents is reviewed and signed off annually and contains the following:

‘It is the policy of the UK Statistics Authority (including the Office for National Statistics, its Executive Office) to conduct its operations in a manner that reflects a commitment to the protection of the environment, embeds the principles and priorities of the Government’s sustainable development strategy and complies with environmental laws and regulations.’

The UK Statistics Authority will:

• Achieve continual improvement in environmental performance.
• Consider the environmental impact of our operations and prevent pollution and reduce carbon emissions wherever possible.
• Aim to meet or exceed the targets established by the Greening Government Commitments, incorporating the UK’s NetZero 2050 target.
• Meet all environmental legislative requirements.
• Comply with sustainable reporting requirements.

Our objectives are to:

• Reduce carbon emissions from fuel consumption by our buildings.
• Reduce carbon emissions from business operations, such as travel and paper use. Reduce water consumption.
• Reduce, reuse, or recycle all waste.
• Incorporate sustainable development elements into our purchasing and contract management strategies; for example, consideration of life cycle, end-of-life and appropriate disposal of products and goods.
• Incorporate ISO14001 principles across the ONS (Office for National Statistics) Estate.
• Meet the guidance requirements set out under Section 6 of the Environment (Wales) Action 2016 Part 1 on Biodiversity.
• Encourage volunteering opportunities within the local community.

Implementation

The UK Statistics Authority will meet these aims and objectives by the means set out in our Sustainable Development Action Plan.

Sustainable development action plan

The Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP) has been created to support the Authority’s Sustainable Development Policy by identifying the actions that the Authority needs to take to comply with Policy and providing a means for tracking the actions. Central Government expects an SDAP from all departments and their executive agencies. This is to ensure that the strategic actions of the organisation intend to integrate Sustainable Development (SD) into its decision-making and everyday operations are recorded. The Authority maintains a SDAP which is reviewed yearly.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond
National Statistician
UK Statistics Authority