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: 23 December 2025

Since the last update in September, the UK Statistics Authority (the Authority) and the Government Statistical Service (GSS) have been progressing work to respond to the UK Statistics Assembly independent report. This update outlines progress to date and our plans for the future.

Since the Assembly, there have been significant changes at the Authority including to leadership. There has also been a need to prioritise activity across the system, in the context of constrained resources. Therefore, wherever possible, work on the report’s recommendations is being integrated into existing plans. Activity will be reviewed again following the appointment of a permanent National Statistician in early 2026, including the need for any new initiatives.

This update focuses on progress on the following four cross cutting priorities.

1. Re-invigorate sustained and effective user engagement, in which official statistics producers take a lead in understanding the needs for statistics and curating relevant sources, to help answer the questions that the public, businesses, local government, the media and academics, as well as policy-makers have about the economic, social and environmental situation. This would also help understand and increase the value of statistics.
2. Develop a portfolio of official and unofficial sources, along with use of appropriate methodologies, to ensure user needs for more granular statistics are met (small areas, urban/rural, sub-groups of society, under-represented groups, and so on).
3. Commit to, invest in, and take a leadership position in 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, including government departments and external bodies, alongside and integrated with surveys, censuses, and other types of data.
4. Recognise the needs for UK-wide statistics and advocate for, and support, harmonised data where desirable.

The Assembly report was advisory but, in line with our work to enhance user engagement and improve feedback, we will be transparent on what we plan to deliver, as well as what we will not be able to deliver at this time.

In addition to the four cross cutting priorities, the Assembly report made numerous detailed recommendations structured around the 15 Assembly sessions. We aim to publish a response to the detailed recommendations in the first half of 2026.

We will also be considering plans for future Assemblies, as well as new opportunities for users to feed into our priorities in this period up to the next Assembly.

We welcome feedback on our plans. Please email assembly@statistics.gov.uk

User engagement

The Authority committed to refreshing our user engagement strategy in response to the Statistics Assembly’s recommendations.

Our strengthened ambition for user engagement has three strands:

1. Coordinate user engagement across government departments producing statistics via existing GSS networks.
2. Strengthen practice where necessary building on the wealth of existing guidance ensuring it remains relevant to both producers and users, and encourages dialogue that enables a feedback loop.
3. Promote user engagement channels and opportunities across all audiences to ensure broad participation and clarity of how users can engage with official statistics.

There is a great deal of work undertaken across the on user engagement. In most cases engagement is embedded in the statistical production process, with Heads of Profession (HoPs) for statistics and working level collaboration across departments.

Examples of good practice and innovative thinking from across the GSS along with examples where things have gone less well will be shared across the GSS through collaborative sessions and guidance to drive improved engagement with users. This will include updating resources for the particular benefit of new members of the GSS.

Recent examples of user engagement undertaken by the GSS that exemplify the three strands above include:

1. The Home Office recently carried out user engagement on police ethnicity data for stop-and-search. Statisticians met with stakeholders to review stop and search statistics, with a particular focus on ensuring the completeness of ethnicity data. Home Office officials are now working with Chief Constables in England and Wales to identify any barriers to recording ethnicity data to help improve this set of statistics.
2. In July 2025, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) held the Family Finance Surveys User Conference. It offered users from a wide range of sectors, including academic institutions, think tanks, as well as local and central government, a chance to connect with DWP and Office for National Statistics (ONS) colleagues, and to share ideas on how the publications can be used and developed. The plan is to continue this approach in future years.
3. Recognising the complex landscape for users of health and care statistics, the ONS, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) came together to launch a consultation in December 2023 seeking user feedback on the statistics portfolio and improving user experience on individual publications. Working collaboratively, together the different organisations looked at over 200 publications, considering coherence to identify where there was duplication or confusion, and proposing changes and improvements to specific statistics. Engagement was through a mix of channels with over 370 responses from a varied user base. The response was published in November 2024, outlining how statistics will be produced for maximum possible benefit, as well as creating flexibility to respond to new priorities.
4. The Scottish Government’s Cancer Patient Experience Survey provided a baseline for evaluating Scotland’s ten-year Cancer Strategy delivered in partnership with Macmillan and Public Health Scotland. To ensure the survey met diverse user needs, colleagues established a stakeholder group including clinicians, policy leads and representatives from the third sector to provide input on survey content, methodology and outputs. New questions were tested with patients to ensure the survey captured meaningful and actionable insights. The team also responded to strong user interest in the analysis of free-text comments. The final statistical outputs were accessible and allowed users to explore results by cancer type and understand statistical uncertainty in a clearer way.
5. In October 2025, the ONS launched the Census 2031 topic consultation which starts the work to shape the next census to best meet user needs. In parallel, the GSS is consulting on whether additional tick-box response options are required for a new ethnicity harmonised standard.
6. The ONS is working in partnership with the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) on a series of roundtables to enable RSS members and other relevant experts to provide independent advice and constructive challenge on the key issues facing the statistical system. The first of these considered improving survey representativeness (covering both social and business surveys) and involved stakeholders such as academics, representatives of the business community and other survey delivery organisations. The second roundtable discussed Census 2031, and other events are planned for 2026.
7. In his first few months in office, the new ONS Director-General for Surveys and Economic and Social Statistics, James Benford, has met a number of stakeholders, particularly economic statistics users. This is both to understand user needs and concerns and explain our Economic Statistics and Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plans. The ONS is committed to working in the open on these plans, being transparent on progress and challenges, including through James’ regular blogs. We have set up an external steering group with core users of economic statistics but will be looking how we can leverage other fora to engage more systematically with wider users of economic statistics in 2026.
8. Led by the ONS, but involving the wider GSS, the Bringing Data to Life webinar series is targeted at non-expert users and so enables a wider audience to be engaged. To date in 2025, over 7,700 individuals have registered for 13 events, with over 550 people attending each event on average.
9. The ONS is developing a plan to promote, improve and increase usage and user engagement on StatsUserNetwork. The network is open to a wide range of members, including government analysts, local authorities, researchers and beyond, allowing for follow-up questions, identification of data gaps, exchange of best practices, and peer support.
10. The ONS has launched a pilot of an ongoing feedback process to gather suggested improvements production and dissemination of Household Cost Indices. If successful, this continuous feedback approach will be rolled out to other statistical topics.
11. The ONS has tightened their internal policy on timely responses to user queries, aiming to deliver a consistent service across all ONS inboxes, regardless of which team is contacted. Work is underway to consolidate the email contact addresses on the ONS website, and to look at how to make it easier for users to interact with the ONS as part of the current content and website transformation programme. The ONS is collaborating with stakeholders and conducting ongoing user research during the website transformation, to ensure the new functionality serves user needs.

We have not progressed development of the refreshed Authority user engagement strategy as quickly as we would have liked. The next step for its development involves engaging widely with users on their key needs, reflecting that users of official statistics represent a broad range of sectors and level of statistical knowledge. We will ensure the strategy is developed in line with the recently updated Code of Practice for Statistics.

In the meantime, GSS theme workplans covering all GSS work on Children and education, Environment, climate and nature, Global trade and investment, Health and social care, and Welfare, wellbeing and housing have now been published.

We are also considering a directory of statistics that allows users to find in one place which department produces specific statistics. The directory would also cover any unmet user requests to provide an overview of needs and reduce the need for repeated enquiries.

Throughout this work, we will test and learn from fellow producers and users and use cross government networks to promote and implement what works across the GSS.

Granular statistics

Since the Statistics Assembly, the ONS and GSS have made good progress advancing recommendations related to the development of granular statistics.

The ONS continues to foster good relationships with local government and build their understanding of what granular statistics are needed via ONS Local and the newly created Mayoral Data Council, ran by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and England’s Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs).

The Local Data and Insights project (a collaboration between the ONS and the MHCLG) has continued to develop new granular statistics and insights that directly respond to user needs. Examples of this include: exploratory work into the feasibility of producing Mayoral Strategic Authority level outputs on productivity by sector, analysis on towns and high streets (local spend, footfall), developing an evolving geography strategy to look at the provision of statistical geographies in light of changes emerging due to increasing devolution and local government reorganisation, connectivity (local travel connections to local services), and continued developments to small area Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) and Gross Value Added (GVA) statistics.

Another critical outcome for local stakeholders was the decision taken to commit to delivering a Census in 2031. This will deliver an important, rich set of granular statistics, although there continues to be a need to consider the availability of more frequent and timely statistics, especially on protected characteristics.

The development of subnational economic statistics continues to be relevant with the continued interest in growth, productivity and devolution, but also on evaluation and monitoring of public service reform.

The ONS has initiated a Rural Statistics Working Group with a mission to improve the understanding and accessibility of statistics related to rural, coastal, and island areas; promote collaboration across organisational and geographical boundaries; adopt best practices; and advocate for these communities to ensure their statistics needs are represented.

There continue to be excellent opportunities across the GSS to deliver improvements to the suite of granular statistics. These include re-invigorating and re-energising the Senior Subnational Data Group, rolling out guidance for producing statistics for (as a minimum) Mayoral Combined Authorities, and developing the Evolving Geography Strategy to reflect local government reform. Following work done between the Mayoral Data Council and the GSS Regions and Geography Committee, we are aware of the need to publish more statistics at Mayoral Combined Authority (International Territorial Level 2), in part to inform the future impact of local government reform.

The main barriers to developing new granular statistics include the quality of statistics at local authority/regional/national level (which result in further quality reductions at more granular levels), resources to deliver more without compromising improving the quality of core statistics, gaps in methods development and different practices and levels of appetite for statistical disclosure control and suppression rules.

What are we doing next?

• The ONS’s prioritisation review highlighted subnational statistics as a potential area to reconsider scope. At the time of writing, the ONS is working closely with stakeholders within and outside of government to discuss user priorities to inform decisions.
• The ONS is aiming to improve the availability of statistics at Mayoral Strategic Authorities in England level as a standard across the GSS, with the development of standardised guidance and geographies to help with this.
• The ONS will look into refreshing the GSS Statistical Disclosure Control guidance to overcome some of the barriers experienced in some government departments.
• The ONS will continue to gather user needs and share them across the GSS, building towards a more streamlined mechanism for doing this in future.

Resources are often a constraining factor in developing more granular statistics – and that the focus will often need to be on maintaining and improving the quality of existing national level statistics. However, where opportunities are identified to create more granular breakdowns of existing statistics without disproportionate additional resource, and where there is a clear user need, the ONS will aim to support this to happen. This could be delivered through signposting to guidance on creating more granular breakdowns, convening engagement between experts within the GSS community, or sharing case studies / proof of concept approaches on granular statistics production.

Increasing the use of administrative data

Since the Statistics Assembly, positive progress has been made in advancing recommendations aimed at increasing the use of administrative data.

In response to the recommendations, the ONS published a new approach to ‘data sources’ in December 2025, including examples of where administrative data is being used for public good.

There are many case studies available on the Analytical Government Hub and the ONS website includes new content explaining the Reference Data Management Framework. Administrative Data Research (ADR) UK includes several data linkage impact case studies.

The first meeting of a new GSS ‘administrative data’ group under this workstream will take place in January 2026. Departments have identified analytical programmes of work to improve the use of administrative data in official statistics, and these will be shared and discussion with the new group, with the intention of communicating more widely. A communications plan will be developed to support the publishing of stories on the use of data for the public benefit, and work towards enhancing activity to clearly articulate the value of data linkage and sharing to the public.

The Assembly stated that we should establish an online ‘trust centre’ on the website to provide transparency about data usage and security protocols, similar to the models used by Statistics Canada and Central Statistics Office Ireland. Whilst much of the content for this exists on the ONS website already, it is not easy to find and does not sit in one place. A new Trust Centre page will be established on the ONS website in 2026.

The Assembly requested the publication of detailed information on the use of administrative data in the last census. This is published and includes details on the geographic areas where response rates were lower and how administrative data was used to fill the gaps.

There is some work under consideration on the topic of administrative data where the work has not yet been committed to; for example, work to engage official statisticians more in the design of digital data architectures for administrative data from diverse sources. There are ongoing discussions with the Data Standards Authority that have identified areas of shared interest where data standards and statistical standards overlap, for example, how government defines a household. Further engagement is underway between the GSS Harmonisation Team and the Data Standards Authority to understand where greater standardisation is needed.

The Assembly recommended further actions to provide guidance on statistical methods for coping with discontinuities in time series arising from changing data collection methods, to transition from reporting average weekly earnings to average monthly earnings to better reflect current business practices, and to promote collaboration among local government organisations to share resources and develop common data models and consistency across local authority data systems, especially for administrative data. There are no plans to progress these at this time due to a range of reasons, including the requirement for additional investment, need for greater understanding of where the opportunities are to address these, and the subnational statistics portfolio currently being reconsidered as part of ONS prioritisation.

UK-wide coherence

In 2026, a dedicated group will look to work with UK government departments to assess the coherence of devolved statistics they produce and to provide guidance to statisticians across all parts of the GSS, helping them to embed coherence work at the start of publication cycles. Once firmly established, the group will then consider how best to take forward other aspects of work on coherence, including how statistics that are already published can be improved to aid users’ understanding of all parts of the UK.

Following the OSR report on UK statistical coherence, the UK statistical system leaders have discussed the development of a substantial workplan, to which the dedicated group will contribute towards, alongside any additional work they believe to be essential. This work plan will be governed by the Inter Administrative Committee (IAC), chaired by the National Statistician, supported by the Chief Statisticians of the Devolved Governments and dovetail into the activity undertaken to support the UK Concordat on Statistics across data sharing and standards, governance and strategy, user needs, and capability and resourcing.

The Concordat will be reviewed in 2026 with any additional emphasis from this work programme incorporated. Alongside the Concordat review, a fuller list of those data and statistics that the UK statistical community prioritise will be published. The group will work with the IAC to publish a clear framework for assessing coherence, ensuring it is done in a way that is suitable for the user and whether comparability should be considered across local regions as compared to just the four nations.

To support data sharing, further discussions on this are required to ensure all appropriate considerations are being made around legal bases and whether any other legislative approaches would support statistical work. Further discussions are to take place in 2026. Any governance arrangement should reflect an agreed vision beyond the Concordat that sets out our long-term aims and objectives, how work is delivered, and how progress is tracked.

 

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.