Introduction

Since our last update in December 2025, colleagues across the Government Statistical Service (GSS) have continued to make progress against the four priority areas identified in the Independent Report on the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly. Work has also commenced on the detailed recommendations arising from the Assembly.

In light of the themes raised by the Assembly, the ONS as the UK’s National Statistical Institute (NSI) is leading a lot of this work, working closely with the GSS. The GSS is the community of all UK civil servants that collect, analyse, produce, and communicate statistics. This includes the Devolved Governments. The devolution of policy areas means that recommendations in this update may vary in their territorial coverage. Where we have referred to work taking place across the GSS, this reflects input from multiple departments.

For the first time, this update sets out progress against all 227 recommendations in the Assembly report. This transparent approach to reporting highlights the good progress being made as well as where decisions have been taken to pause activity. We also recognise that there is more that can be done to ensure responses to the recommendations are a truly cross-GSS collaboration.

The statistical landscape and context in which the GSS is operating has evolved since the Independent Report was published in March 2025. To adapt to this, certain workstreams covered in this update, whilst still beneficial to users, may align less directly to original recommendations but follow current user need. Constrained resources across the GSS and the ONS’s focus on quality over quantity have also led to prioritisation decisions, which were made following engagement with users. This prioritisation has also been applied to the recommendations in the Assembly report and activity will be sequenced accordingly.

If you have any questions or comments on this update, please contact assembly@statistics.gov.uk.