ONS: Latest steps reaffirm commitment to quality over quantity

19 Feb 2026 11:25 AM

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) today detailed steps that will sharpen the organisation's focus on delivering high quality economic and social statistics that are essential to UK decision-makers. 

Ramping up our drive to put quality over quantity, the measures will streamline the organisation's portfolio and consolidate publications, as we work to restore confidence in our most critical statistics.   

This also represents progress towards our commitment to reduce our statistical outputs by 10 per cent in 2026 - all part of considering user needs and focusing ONS statistics where they deliver most value, and where we are uniquely placed to do so.  

Our priority focus continues to be producing and improving our national statistics that underpin the UK's most critical economic and societal decisions and inform the public, including GDP, prices, labour market and population statistics, alongside transition to the Transformed Labour Force Survey and preparatory work for Census 2031. 

Permanent Secretary at the Office for National Statistics Darren Tierney said: 

"As we continue the ONS's recovery, we are setting out our latest steps in our commitment to put quality over quantity and sharpen the focus of our portfolio - this will ensure we can devote more resources to our improvement work.  

"Difficult decisions to reduce the number of our publications are essential to restoring the quality of our core statistics - I would like to thank our users for their continued engagement as we ensure statistics that underpin the UK's most critical decisions are back at the heart of our work." 

Today's announcement follows close engagement with users across health, subnational and areas of economic statistics relevant to government departments. It responds to the recommendations last year from the Devereux review and the Office for Statistics Regulation to prioritise improvements to the quality of our core economic statistics. The changes will mean a reduction in our statistical outputs over the immediate period while we focus on these improvements. Measures include:  

• Reducing the ONS's involvement in health surveys – the Health Survey for England and the Mental Health of Children and Young People Survey will no longer be run by the ONS as previously planned.  
• Pausing our quarterly greenhouse gas emission (residence basis) statistics – annual greenhouse gas emissions statistics continue to be published by the ONS, DESNZ and Defra. 
• Stopping further development of some subnational statistics – Health, Wellbeing and Place research will not progress and instead data will be made available to researchers through the Secure Research Service; Subnational estimates of tourism spending and Tourism Direct Gross Value Added will be stopped. 
• Scaling back activity related to wellbeing statistics, including reducing publication of our main dashboard from a quarterly to an annual basis, supported by a shorter quarterly set of measures to meet new international requirements. 
• Ending our analysis on the night-time economy, and lifestyles and risk factors and reviewing our approach to other work previously funded by external organisations.  

In response to user feedback, we will continue to run the Annual Population Survey (APS) which reflects ONS outputs at a local and regional level. However, this will be at a lower level of resourcing, enabling us to bolster the Living Costs and Food Survey - a key contributor to GDP and other economic statistics. We will work with users on the implications of this for their data. 

The ONS will publish its 2026/27 Strategic Business Plan in April, where we will set out further detail on our priority activities, learning from the past to ensure plans are realistic and carefully sequenced, given available resource.   

Notes to Editors: 

• Permanent Secretary Darren Tierney has today written to the interim chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Penny Young, setting out the full list of reduced outputs.
  • Later this year the ONS will launch a new website, bringing greater clarity and accessibility to our data for users and improving and consolidating our publications to focus on what audiences need most. Steps include:
  • Consolidating our annual mortality publications to include deaths of homeless people within the annual mortality bulletin and publish unexplained deaths in infancy as a data-only release.
  • Combining publications on marriages, divorces and civil partnerships.
  • Moving to a single annual publication on Housing Affordability, with a rotation of in-depth articles as appropriate.
• For our Labour Market statistics, consolidating four releases into a single labour market overview, along with all of the associated datasets.
• We will work closely with users on the changes to the APS and what that will mean for their data needs at the local and regional level, as there will be gradual impacts from September 2026.  Meanwhile we will continue to increase survey quality where we can. Longer term we will seek to address user needs currently met via the APS through our Transformed Labour Force Survey.    
• This focus on quality over quantity follows the immediate action taken in the wake of Sir Robert Devereux's review into the ONS in June 2025, to support the organisation's recovery, including:
  • Appointing a new Permanent Secretary, separate to the Office of the National Statistician.
  • Appointing a new Director-General for Surveys and Economic Statistics, overseeing the end-to-end production of the most critical economic statistics from survey collection to publication.
  • Pulling back on analysis not required to improve the quality of our statistics last autumn, including the closure of the Integrated Data Service Programme and repurposing of analytical resource, redirecting around 150 skilled roles in support of our economic statistics and survey improvement and enhancement plans.
• The Office for Statistics Regulation's Systemic Review of ONS's Economic Statistics in November 2025 recommended that the ONS take action to rebuild trust in its core economic statistics.