ONS pledges "quality over quantity" with key statistics prioritised

12 Nov 2025 01:16 PM

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday announced plans to narrow the focus of its publications to support the recovery in the quality of the core economic and social statistics that are key to decision makers.

Overall, the aim is to reduce the number of outputs that the ONS produces annually by around 10% in 2026, through prioritisation and consolidation. Alongside a new website, we will improve our publications, focusing on what audiences need most and delivering streamlined, clearer information – continuing the decrease in the number of ONS outputs in recent years, representing a halving since the COVID-19 pandemic and Census 2021 peak.

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

"Our top priority is restoring the quality of our core statistics, and we are already enacting the key recommendations from Sir Robert Devereux's review.

"Today's plans take us one step further, narrowing the focus of our portfolio and reducing the number of publications so we can devote resources to our improvement work, putting quality over quantity and working closely with users to rebuild trust."

The announcements yesterday included:

• Reducing commitments in health: The ONS played an important role in supporting the UK's COVID-19 response and has continued to provide valued insights on health, drawing on the expertise and capabilities we developed during the pandemic. We will continue to produce statistics such as births, deaths and life expectancy that form part of our core population outputs. However, we will be reducing other health analysis work, engaging stakeholders and other parts of government to identify outputs that others should take forward. 
• Reviewing funding of crime statistics: We will continue to produce headline crime statistics through the Crime Survey for England and Wales. While the ONS is uniquely placed to produce independent crime statistics, to ensure the funding we receive matches the cost of delivering the statistics, we will review our broader work beyond the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
• Reconsidering the subnational statistics portfolio, including the merits of running the Annual Population Survey (APS): Subnational statistics provide a critical evidence base for local decision making and increase the value of the ONS's wider outputs by reflecting them at the local and regional level. Many can only be produced by the ONS. However, we will now take the opportunity to consider the breadth, sequencing and frequency of sub-national publications and development work in the run up to Census 2031, understanding what resource could be freed up in the near term. Given recognised quality concerns on the APS, and the withdrawal of some external funding, collection of APS boost data in Scotland will cease in January. We will first reach out to key users to understand how APS data are being used, the impact of reduced quality and whether additional quality guidance will be valuable. 

These changes will free up staff for core quality improvement activity and generate capacity to expedite recovery work through our Economic Statistics and Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plans. We will continue to closely engage our stakeholders across local and national government, academia, business and civil society, and ensure our statistics provide the greatest possible value to our end users. 

Yesterday's announcement follows the immediate action and improvements taken in the wake of Sir Robert Devereux's review into the organisation, which has included:

• Appointing a new Permanent Secretary, separate to the Office of the National Statistician;
• Appointing a new Director-General for Surveys and Economic and Social Statistics, overseeing the end-to-end production of the most critical economic statistics from survey collection to publication; 
• Reducing analysis of statistics that is not directly linked to core statistics – including the closure of the Integrated Data Service Programme; and
• Repurposing analytical resource to redirect around 150 skilled roles in support of recovery plans.

Notes to Editors

The other plans set out yesterday were: 

• Engaging government departments in relevant areas of economic statistics: The statistics required to produce the UK national accounts and closely related extended accounts, in line with current and upcoming international standards, are wide-ranging, reflecting the breadth of the economy. In some areas, such as housing, the environmental economy, tourism and wellbeing, the ONS produces statistical outputs that are needed for work on national accounts or other core economic statistics and which are also closely related to statistical work in relevant central and devolved government departments. In these areas we will explore with specific government stakeholders whether there are opportunities for ONS to partner on these outputs to optimise the statistics, and to consider appropriate split of responsibilities. 
• Narrowing the focus of the ONS's contribution to international work to themes most relevant to ONS core statistics, the census, and continued progress on integration of data from surveys and administration sources. Our international work will continue to recognise the need to support wider HM Government priorities globally where we have the capacity to do so. 
• Consolidating our business surveys portfolio to reduce burden on both respondents and business areas and to improve the quality of the data we collect.