This is one of a series of reports prepared under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Act gives the Statistics Authority power to re-assess whether the Code of Practice for Official Statistics continues to be complied with in relation to official statistics already designated as National Statistics. The report covers the following short-term economic indicators produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and reported in:
• Gross Domestic Product: Preliminary Estimate (GDP)
• Index of Production (IoP)
• Index of Services (IoS)
This report forms part of a broader assessment of short-term economic output indicators produced by ONS. Assessment reports 279 and 280 examine Retail Sales statistics and Construction Outputs and New Orders.
The previous assessments of IoP and IoS statistics were reported in Assessment report 81, published in January 2011. The GDP preliminary estimates were assessed in Assessment report 100, published in March 2011. Each of these sets of statistics has been re-assessed as part of the Statistics Authority’s ongoing programme of re-assessment.
This report was prepared by the Authority’s Assessment team, and approved by the Assessment Committee on behalf of the Board of the Statistics Authority, based on the advice of the Head of Assessment.