UK Statistics Assembly 2025

The UK Statistics Assembly

The UK Statistics Authority, delivered in partnership with the Royal Statistical Society, took place on Wednesday 22 January 2025.

The Assembly was established in response to a recommendation in the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority. It was attended by over 500 participants (in-person and online) including from central, local and devolved governments, business and industry, academia, civil society and charities, to discuss and advise on the statistical and data priorities for the UK. 

The full participant pack, which includes the event’s agenda, is still available to view online, as is the response to the call for contributions which informed the agenda. 

Independent report

The Authority asked Professor David Hand, Chair of the National Statistician’s Expert User Advisory Committee, to produce an independent report distilling the discussions and recommendations from the day. The report has now been published on the Authority website alongside a short statement. 

Update: 15 September 2025

Earlier in the year, we welcomed the independent report following the inaugural UK Statistics Assembly. Since then, the UK Statistics Authority and the Government Statistical Service (GSS) have been considering the report and how to respond to its recommendations.

The report made four high-level recommendations, to:

• ensure our user engagement is effective in understanding needs, continuing and building on the engagement from the Assembly
• address user needs for more granular statistics including small-area populations and characteristics on under-represented groups
• lead the way in using more administrative data, improving its quality and integration with surveys and other sources
• recognise the for UK-wide statistics and advocate for, and support, harmonised data where desirable

For each of these recommendations we are developing workplans that are each led by senior colleagues from both the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the GSS to ensure implementation across the official statistics system. The immediate priorities for these four workplans are as follows.

User engagement

We will refresh our user engagement strategy to ensure users are at the heart of our statistics. We will do this through three strands. First, by coordinating user engagement across government departments producing statistics via existing GSS networks. Second, by strengthening practice where necessary, building on the wealth of existing guidance and ensuring it remains relevant to both producers and users, and encourages dialogue that ensures an ongoing feedback loop. Third, by promoting user engagement channels and opportunities across all audiences to ensure broad participation and clarity on how users can engage with official statistics. We plan to engage users across all sectors in this refresh so we consider user needs and perspectives in the design of our strategy.

Granular statistics

We will build on the foundations that have already been laid through the Local Data and Insights project, a collaboration between the ONS and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, which saw the implementation of the ONS Local service, Explore Local Statistics, and the development of new subnational statistics. We will identify short, medium and long term deliverables that focus on introducing new guidance and best practice that can be shared across the GSS for producing more granular statistics. This includes recommendations about geographies and methods and tools that can be used to develop and visualise these statistics. We are looking at improved ways of gathering local user needs and sharing them across the GSS and exploring barriers that may exist in making more granular statistics available. The new Rural Statistics Working Group, a collaboration between local government, the ONS and Defra, has been set up to tackle the statistical challenges faced by rural, coastal and island communities, which responds directly to some of the feedback from users at the UK Statistics Assembly.

Increasing the use of administrative data

We aim to meet the Assembly recommendation of a “significant scaling up in the use of administrative data, as well as improvement of its quality and coherence across the entire portfolio of sources of official statistics”. We are considering the deliverability and priority of the immediate actions proposed by the Assembly and are developing a plan with two main strands. First, by building and sharing positive examples of what analysis is already happening using administrative data which has been shared across government, and identifying user benefits from taking a more programmatic approach across government. And second, by identifying common challenges and opportunities where guidance and collaborative working can be strengthened, for example around methods, standards, coherence and transparency of data use.

UK-wide coherence

We are working closely with partners and statistical producers in the devolved governments of the UK, and with the Union and Devolution Directorate at Cabinet Office, on a coordinated response to recent reviews on UK coherence, including the Lievesley Review, the UK Statistics Assembly report, and the Office for Statistics Regulation’s review on the comparability of UK-wide data. We will work across the UK statistical system on a workplan for improving statistical coherence that is informed by achieving a broader understanding of user needs for UK comparable data. We aim to enable access to coherent data and evidence from across the UK, supporting decision-makers at all levels and providing insight to all statistical users with an interest in UK-wide data. This work will be overseen by the Inter-Administration Committee, which includes the National Statistician and the Chief Statisticians of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

More detail on these plans and on how we will respond to the other recommendations made in the report will be published later this autumn.