The UK’s statistics watchdog has ordered the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to urgently overhaul its data collection methods within the next four weeks, amid growing alarm over the reliability of official economic figures used to shape government and Bank of England decisions.
The intervention comes after a series of delays and data quality concerns that have prompted widespread criticism from economists, policymakers and MPs. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), which monitors the quality of official data, has demanded that the ONS publish a fully-resourced improvement plan to “restore confidence” in its surveys.
It follows growing frustration over missed publication deadlines for key data, including trade, producer price inflation, and services inflation figures, as well as long-standing concerns about collapsing response rates to the Labour Force Survey — one of the core measures of the UK jobs market.
Once widely trusted, the Labour Force Survey now has response rates below 20%, down from 50% a decade ago — a decline that has eroded confidence in statistics crucial for assessing employment trends, productivity, and wage growth.
In an interim report, the OSR said there was an “urgent need to modernise” how the ONS collects and manages data, noting the agency is struggling more than international counterparts to recover post-pandemic.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
