ONS economic statistics and surveys improvement plan, quarterly progress update: April 2026 - Office for National Statistics

ONS economic statistics and surveys improvement plan, quarterly progress update: April 2026 - Office for National Statistics
ONS economic statistics and surveys improvement plan, quarterly progress update: April 2026
Progress across the ONS against our recovery plans for improving our economic statistics and surveys, between December 2025 and March 2026.
In this section
Executive summary
Introduction
How the ONS is supporting delivery
Our progress in December 2025 to March 2026
Looking ahead
Conclusion
Cite this article
This second update on the Office for National Statistics's (ONS's) improvement plans for surveys and economic statistics responds to recommendations and feedback from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) on the last update, as well as their original recommendation of quarterly reporting on the plans.
The ONS has undergone significant shifts in its strategic focus and approach as we continue to strengthen the organisation and make progress against our improvement plans and address long-standing issues such as migrating from legacy systems. Transformation of this scale and complexity is inherently difficult and requires careful sequencing, and plans will inevitably need to evolve as we learn more about the steps the changes we are seeking require and as priorities evolve.
Since our
December 2025 progress update
, we have continued to:
improve the quality of published statistics
make further progress developing new systems
reduce reliance on legacy systems and processes across several critical areas
improve the way we prioritise and manage complex change
Labour market statistics
Response levels on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) continue to show clear improvement, with the survey improvements now fully embedded and all waves now close to their pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level as a result.
We have implemented all agreed major design improvements to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) to strengthen data quality, including data rotation (not re-asking the full questionnaire in each wave), improved pay and earnings questions, and a higher respondent incentive.
Work is under way to understand potential employment-related variation in non-response bias by linking survey data with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI); early results are providing useful insights and will be published later this year.
Prices and inflation
Grocery scanner data have been incorporated into consumer price statistics for February 2026 data onwards, covering around half of the UK grocery market and improving coverage and quality. This concludes around four years of work and has the additional benefit of modernising and de-risking the production process for consumer prices, and building a capability to onboard further big datasets.
We have doubled the sample size for hotels and computer games, reducing volatility in those price components, and improvements to house price statistics have reduced revisions and moved production further away from legacy systems.
Public sector, trade and national accounts
Development of a new central government processing system was completed in March 2026, significantly reducing reliance on legacy technology.
In trade statistics, improved methods, bias analysis and clearer user guidance are strengthening confidence, with a new user guide on trade asymmetries soon to be published.
Research with independent experts has begun to review how gross domestic product (GDP) is balanced, strengthening the foundations for future improvements.
We have published
our response to the OSR report on the topic of residual seasonality in GDP
. We will publish an article providing further details on our approach to assessing residual seasonality and making non-seasonally adjusted GDP data available to users.
By the end of April 2026, we will satisfy all aspects of the International Monetary Fund's Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus, the highest dissemination standard, which recognises the publication of comprehensive, timely, accessible and reliable economic and financial statistics.
Foundations for future improvement
Alongside these improvements, significant groundwork is being laid for longer-term change.
We are establishing our work to implement International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) as a formal ONS programme, reflecting its scale and importance. Discovery work will confirm which of the new standards can be implemented by 2030 to 2031. A finalised version of the updated
UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)
has now been published.
From April 2026, we will introduce a systematic programme of end-to-end quality reviews aligned to the Generic Statistical Business Process Model, responding directly to feedback from the OSR.
Survey quality and resilience are improving, with better participation from households across our social surveys, although rebuilding response volumes and field capacity remains challenging. On business surveys the Large Case and Account Management Units are helping reduce reliance on enforcement policies and improving response rates and data quality.
A new Data Governance Framework has been launched, and we are in the process of embedding a new data ownership model across the organisation alongside designing standards and exploring capabilities, which enable stronger management of our data. This requires ongoing business change and engagement to identify critical data sources and assure quality plans with data suppliers and for critical sources. Positive early progress is being made, with OSR-led data supplier engagement events planned over the next quarter.
We have developed a first iteration of an integrated target data and technology architecture for the ONS, and collated a clear organisational view of our code base, which will inform future development and delivery models. Further supporting coherence, social surveys are aligning more closely with census technology, maximising learning, reuse and opportunities for a more unified enterprise approach.
Discovery work is under way to shape future online collection and processing platforms for business surveys, including self-service capability to improve data quality, resilience and the experience for businesses. Operational efficiency is improving through better use of existing technology, including smarter telephony dashboards, real-time operational insight and increased automation in business surveys.
We are reducing reliance on legacy systems, expanding the use of reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) and setting clearer standards and assurance as we explore the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in statistics, including shaping an AI Strategy for Social Surveys to improve efficiency and quality.
Key challenges and how we are managing them
We have completed over two-thirds of the milestones that were planned for 2025 to 2026. This is both a significant step forward in improving the quality of statistics and an indication of the high degree of ambition in the original plans. Where we have encountered delays, milestones will be delivered to revised plans; we will share further details on these in our next update in July 2026. These are the areas of most significant challenge.
Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS)
We are working closely with users to refine criteria and conditions for transitioning from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to the TLFS ahead of the first evidence-led readiness assessment in July 2026.
At this point, only one calendar quarter of data reflecting the latest set of design changes will have been collected, allowing for only limited quality assessment of their impact. Given this limited data availability, further data collection and assessment will be needed, meaning the earliest transition of headline labour market statistics has shifted from November 2026 into 2027. A 2027 transition has always been part of our scenario planning and is now considered the most likely outcome.
The July readiness assessment will inform final design decisions, future publication plans and the timing of the next readiness review (no later than January 2027). Given the capacity and costs of running the LFS, this will have wider implications for our ability to improve other statistics.
Statistical Business Register (SBR)
The SBR remains one of the most complex and critical dependencies. While progress continues, integration and sequencing challenges mean delivery needs to be replanned. A focused 10-week planning period is under way to establish a robust, evidence-based delivery plan and a phased approach to adoption.
Social surveys
Despite the progress set out previously, we continue to face challenges in rebuilding response volumes, strengthening field capacity and improving engagement with hard‑to‑reach groups.
Given the burden of running two labour force surveys, we are having to make trade-off calls on how we allocate interviewers to other surveys. Legacy systems continue to add operational pressure. However, strengthened governance, clearer prioritisation and targeted interventions are helping to build resilience and put the survey system on a more sustainable long‑term footing.
Statistical quality
Though the number of major errors has fallen, the overall number of errors on economic statistics remains too high.
We have introduced a new process to manage our errors and are routinely setting out the lessons learned and the corresponding actions to strengthen process alongside our corrections. We have launched a new monthly retrospective process across all economic statistics outputs to collectively learn from errors and near misses.
Capacity and sequencing
Around 90% of posts supporting the Economic Statistics Plan (ESP) delivery are filled or in live recruitment, but specialist capacity and enabling services remain stretched. Some work has been resequenced to protect quality and delivery of the most critical outputs.
Population statistics
Following further assessment, administrative-based population estimates will not be adopted as the headline measure for 2026. Population statistics are now being replanned in the context of the decision to proceed with a 2031 Census, with a clearer focus on continuous improvement.
Looking ahead
The ESP and the Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan (SIEP) are being integrated into a single improvement plan, reinforcing an end-to-end focus on quality in the most critical statistics. Milestones will be rationalised and strengthened, and we are developing a strategic set of key performance indicators to measure progress and inform decisions.
Alongside the ONS business planning process, we are re-balancing our portfolio of work to enhance confidence in the most critical areas of delivery. As part of this, we have introduced a framework (referred to as the tiering model) to regularly review,
prioritise and sequence improvements
based on the use of our statistics in critical societal and economic decisions, supporting effective allocation of ONS resources.
A transparent "waiting room" approach is being developed to sequence work realistically, ensuring only initiatives that are ready, resourced and well-defined move into delivery. Immediate focus is on five in-flight priorities:
sustainable business-as-usual delivery of all our statistics, setting up our people for success and leaving time for them to invest in themselves
addressing quality issues, drawing on a new tiering framework that prioritises improvements to statistics underpinning critical decisions
progressing to the TLFS
implementation of the SBR
delivery of the core International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) Programme, focusing first on identifying and implementing the steps required to introduce a new system of industrial classifications, with an ambition to deliver the core methods changes that significantly impact the GDP and the current account by 2030 to 2031
Our ability to initiate more improvement work will be significantly limited while we are double-running two labour force surveys, the SBR is being delivered, and we are establishing our plans to implement new macroeconomic standards. It is already proving challenging to deliver aspects of the improvement plans as we prepare for delivery of the next census, including the test in 2027.
Our next update in July 2026 will reflect the outcome of business planning, setting out the detail on our priorities, what is in the waiting room, a refined set of milestones, and how progress and impact will be tracked through key performance indicators.
Back to table of contents
This is the second quarterly progress update (December 2025 to March 2026) on the Office for National Statistics's (ONS's)
Economic Statistics Plan
(ESP) and
Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan
(SIEP).
The plans were established in June 2025 to improve the quality and secure the long-term sustainability of our core statistical outputs. They set out improvements across every stage and aspect of statistical production, ranging from improved recruitment and retention to embracing new technology and data sources.
We have continued to make good progress. The ONS has further refocused on its core business, and strengthened leadership and governance. We have:
dedicated more resources to surveys and economic statistics
begun a systematic programme of quality reviews
launched a new Data Governance Framework to improve how we manage our data sources
delivered 65 of our 93 [note 1] planned milestones
This quarter has seen the implementation of some of our most impactful changes, while laying the groundwork for further improvement.
The ESP and SIEP are live plans, developed with the expectation that they would evolve as delivery progressed and in light of changing priorities. As we reach the end of the financial year, delivery experience has sharpened our understanding of the scale and complexity of the changes we are seeking to implement, and the importance of managing competing demands on enabling functions. We have begun to streamline our operations through implementation of our Process Excellence toolkit. Initial work on the International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) has clarified the scale of ambition and where we will focus first.
As is normal for complex initiatives, we have encountered challenges, which are now better understood and are being gripped. Stakeholders have been clear about what matters most:
statistics that underpin the most critical decisions need to be high quality and reliable
securing improvements to labour force statistics are particularly important given challenges to household surveys
a new Statistical Business Register (SBR) is critical to improving the coverage of smaller businesses within our surveys and in laying a foundation for updated industry classifications
more broadly, we need to chart a path to implement the core of new international standards by 2030
We are introducing a new "tiering model" to focus quality improvements to statistics that inform the most critical decisions and are limiting the quantum of change we are taking on to protect delivery of these critical foundations.
We have responded to feedback from users and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) on our previous update and shortened this update to focus on the most important developments. We will continue to respond to your needs and feedback can be submitted to
econstatsplan@ons.gov.uk
Notes for Introduction
A review of the approach to production of regular population estimates following the decision to hold a census in 2031 is under way. An assessment of the previously proposed administrative data based mid-year population estimates has confirmed that the ONS is not ready to move to the alternative methods for estimates in 2026. Consequently, seven milestones linked to this work have been excluded as replanning takes place.
Back to table of contents
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) continues to improve the environment for successful delivery of our plans.
A recent externally led
Board Effectiveness Review (PDF, 406KB)
, commissioned by the UK Statistics Authority Board, confirmed that the ONS is operating from a more stable footing, with stronger leadership and governance, and improved grip on delivery. These changes have strengthened transparency, prioritisation and assurance, creating the conditions for more visible, predictable and sustainable progress.
Interviews for the National Statistician concluded in March 2026, and we have appointed a Director General for Digital, Data and Technology. Other key senior leadership roles across the ONS are now in place, bringing stability and helping to strengthen the organisation's ability to deliver. This includes the confirmation of the Director for People and Places, maintaining focus on workforce priorities.
Reflecting the complexity of the organisation, a Director of Strategy and Change has also been appointed to support a more joined up approach across the ONS, with a dedicated Director now overseeing delivery of the improvement plans, increasing leadership capacity and focus.
Continuing to build on the recommendations from the
Devereux Review
and the
Office for Statistics Regulation's (OSR's) Systemic Review of Economic Statistics produced by ONS
, we have set out detailed plans to streamline our portfolio in
ONS: Latest steps reaffirm commitment to quality over quantity
, prioritising quality over quantity and reducing the number of our statistical outputs by 10% in 2026 to 2027. As part of this prioritisation work, we are stepping back from health statistics, reconsidering the subnational statistics portfolio and prioritising the Living Costs and Food Survey over the Annual Population Survey (APS).
These changes increase our capacity to focus on improving quality across the end-to-end statistical system. To support this, we have strengthened our approach to quality assurance through a more systematic, process-based programme of reviews, focused on where improvements will deliver the greatest value for users.
We are also sequencing our change initiatives, deferring certain activity to increase our confidence in delivering our most essential programmes. As part of this, we have created a "waiting room" for important work over the next three years, that we will commence once we have enough capacity and assurance that the change initiatives are set up for success.
In line with recommendations set out in the Devereux Review, we continue to address our reliance on legacy through the changes we are making to support our recovery in areas including public sector, trade and price statistics. Alongside this, the ONS Executive Committee has commissioned a review of legacy technology to identify broader risks and opportunities to improve quality and efficiency across our statistical production. Recommendations from the review will provide a basis for a prioritised, sequenced and integrated plan to be set out for consideration.
We have continued to improve and broaden our engagement with a range of stakeholders to ensure we are responsive to their needs and to build confidence and trust. We have recently undertaken specific engagement activities, including the following.
Our
quarterly external steering group
with colleagues from the Bank of England, HM Treasury (HMT), Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and Cabinet Office. The group remain supportive of our plans and priorities while acknowledging the scale and complexity of the task ahead.
A collaborative open event hosted by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) attended by a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives from the financial services sector, academia, business and other key sectors.
Setting up an Advisory Panel on National Accounts (APoNA) to provide independent advice to the Deputy National Statistician on the production, publication, uses and applications of national accounts and their technical aspects. This includes the regular suite of national accounts publications (monthly, quarterly and annual) as well as the transformation of existing outputs and the development of new statistics. The APoNA forms part of a
suite of advisory panels
and works in parallel with existing advisory panels on labour market and consumer prices statistics.
A business user workshop to understand sector-specific data needs, delivered in partnership with
Better Statistics
, which convened a round table discussion with a range of groups representing businesses across the UK. We are now following up on that initiative by engaging businesses on their experience of providing data to us and on what we can do to lower reporting burden and improve data quality.
A joint round table on user engagement hosted by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and the OSR, with representation from academia, research, charity sector, not for profit organisations as well as other statistics users.
Close to 200 stakeholders attended a webinar we hosted to support our announcement of the incorporation of supermarket scanner data into consumer prices statistics.
Our most recent economic forums covered prices transformation, the new real-time indicators dashboard, changes to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) basket of goods, and other key economic updates (these bi-monthly sessions are attended by 200 to 400 stakeholders).
Setting up a
Social Survey Strategic Forum
, bringing together senior strategic leaders from across government, national statistical institutes, research organisations, academia and the wider survey sector. This will provide a shared strategic space for open dialogue, collective problem‑solving and sector-wide alignment on the major challenges and opportunities facing UK social surveys.
We are working to deliver additional user engagement activity over 2026 to 2027 to provide further opportunities for independent advice, constructive challenge and reflection from the wider user community. This engagement activity includes sectoral stakeholder panels covering sectors such as businesses, think-tanks and academia, and aims to provide greater opportunity for a wider group of users to input into our strategic direction across economic statistics, complementing our existing formal advisory panels on national accounts, consumer prices and labour market statistics.
We are also looking at enhanced stakeholder engagement events and technical briefing for key economic commentators and influencers to accompany our headline economic releases to deepen understanding of our statistics and to seek feedback on our priorities.
Taken together, these show the organisation is better placed to support recovery, with greater leadership stability, clearer prioritisation and stronger engagement. However, delivery remains dependent on maintaining workforce capability, managing legacy risk and continuing to make disciplined trade-offs.
Back to table of contents
As we conclude the financial year, there is clear evidence of progress and momentum. Improvements that have been developed over several years - particularly in prices and public sector statistics - are now delivering more reliable, higher-quality outputs. At the same time, new ways of working are strengthening how we manage quality and resilience, helping to ensure these improvements can be sustained as we move into the next phase.
Since our
December 2025 progress update
, we have made good progress, and seen some improvement to operational stability. We have completed over two-thirds of the milestones that were planned for 2025 to 2026. Table 1 shows the greatest impact of these completed milestones across the Economic Statistics Plan (ESP) has been on improving quality and risk reduction, where the Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan (SIEP) impact is most felt in improved survey and statistical design, and exploitation of modern technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI).
Table 1: Distribution of completed milestones
June 2025 to March 2026, percentage
Plan
Area of Impact
Distribution of Completed milestones June 25 to December 26
(Percentage)
ESP
Discovery and shaping
23
Improved Efficiency
Improved Quality
50
Reduced Risk
18
TOTAL
100
SIEP
Improved Survey & Statistical Design
26
Refreshed Citizen/Business Relationship
19.5
Sustainable Operations
19.5
Technology & Innovation
35
TOTAL
100
Download this table
Table 1: Distribution of completed milestones
.xls
.csv
This is both a significant step forward in improving the quality of statistics and an indication of the high degree of ambition in the original plans. There remain challenges - this is a complex portfolio of activity - but those challenges are better understood and are being tightly gripped. Where we have encountered delays and challenges, we are undertaking replanning and will share more details in our next update in July 2026.
Successes
Improved quality across our surveys
Over the past quarter, we have delivered meaningful progress across both social and business surveys, strengthening quality, reducing delivery risk and improving the experience for respondents and data users.
Our latest
Labour market transformation article
(published 15 April 2026) highlights the implementation of all agreed major design improvements to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) to strengthen data quality, including data rotation (not reasking the full questionnaire in each wave), improved pay and earnings questions, and a higher respondent incentive.
As part of a full package of measures, we are undertaking to improve the long-term sustainability of social surveys, and are starting work to examine whether survey mandation could play a role in addressing the long‑term sustainability of social surveys. This responds to persistent declines in voluntary response rates, which continue to pose risks to data quality and to the ability of social surveys to support economic and societal decisions.
The work is explicitly exploratory: its aim is to develop a clear evidence base on the scale of the challenge, the risks of inaction and the range of possible responses, rather than to presuppose mandation as an outcome. Ultimately, any decision to mandate household surveys would require new primary legislation and therefore rests with government.
Given the scale and sensitivity of the issue, the work is being taken forward through a phased, multidisciplinary approach. Parallel workstreams will consider evidence and international experience, legal and policy feasibility, public acceptability and engagement, end‑to‑end survey design, financial implications, and workforce and enforcement considerations. Progression beyond the initial phase will be contingent on robust analysis and stakeholder insight, with clear decision points and transparency throughout. This approach reflects a commitment to proportionality, public trust and ensuring that any future direction for social surveys is technically sound, publicly legitimate and deliverable.
Substantial effort and investment have already been made to rebuild confidence in social survey data, and early signs are positive, for example, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) response levels have shown clear improvement and are now close to levels reached before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, recovery is ongoing and further work is required to meet our agreed quality targets. Improvements will take time to feed through into published statistics.
Notable activities supporting quality include:
the processing and delivery of data from the Living Costs and Food Survey successfully transitioned to a new reproducible analytical pipeline; this is an important milestone in retiring legacy systems and will enhance a range of critical Office for National Statistics (ONS) outputs, including prices, national accounts and household resilience
we are also finalising a new Survey Sample and Response Tracker (SSRT) that will bring together key operational data, including response rates and achieved interviews over time for each survey, improving transparency on survey operations; the tracker will be released in the coming months to provide transparency on the progress being made to rebuild confidence in the social survey portfolio
Across business surveys, priority remains on implementing the Statistical Business Register and integrating annual structural surveys to embed International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) requirements and address Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) quality recommendations, with careful planning and sequencing critical to redevelopment.
Stronger engagement models have been embedded, increasing case management to nearly 500 reporting units, building specialist expertise and improving response rates and data coherence. For businesses critical to quality, this has reduced reliance on enforcement, driven improvements in important areas, and improved the experience for businesses. Continued investment in automation, dashboards and legacy system management has delivered efficiency gains, and improved operational insight and our ability to scale case management in the next financial year.
In December 2025, we successfully migrated three critical short-term surveys collecting information to inform gross domestic product (GDP) and workforce jobs statistics from legacy systems to the Statistical Preparation Platform. This has already delivered measurable impact, including a 15% improvement in Monthly Business Survey clearance rates, faster error resolution and reduced operational risk. We also remain well positioned to complete the move of remaining Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) surveys online, delivering £0.1 million of savings in the financial year ending March 2027 and £0.2 million per year ongoing.
In January 2026, we engaged with business representative groups, reinforcing the need for improved education and engagement, particularly among the small business community. To support future interventions, we are following up on that initiative by engaging businesses on how they experience providing data to us and on what we can do to lower reporting burden and improve data quality, with plans to share findings later this year.
Overall, this represents strong and encouraging progress, but sustained effort is still needed to consolidate recovery in social surveys and to build a more resilient, sustainable survey system across both business and social surveys.
Our statistics
Price statistics
From November 2025 data onwards, we introduced a further improvement to the underlying methods for UK house price statistics. We updated our modelling system to consider more robust property attributes, resulting in improvements to the quality of data available to users. This ensures we remain on track to move our house price production system away from legacy technology by end-April 2026, easing future improvements.
In December 2025, we issued an
update to our consumer prices revisions and corrections policy
, partly in response to user feedback after an error in April 2025, providing greater clarity on how ONS errors will be communicated and data corrected.
We confirmed that from March 2026, we have
incorporated grocery scanner data into consumer prices production
(February 2026 data onwards) for 50% of the market. This step-change provides a more comprehensive understanding of how grocery prices and consumer spending patterns are evolving. We also announced our plan to further improve consumer prices statistics through updating the collection of hotel and video game prices, expecting this to lead to reduced month-on-month volatility of those indices in future.
Labour market
We have implemented all agreed major design improvements on the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), and our focus is now on preparing for the July 2026 readiness assessment in collaboration with users. It will be a key milestone providing critical insights to inform our next steps. More details on our future plans can be found in our latest
Labour market transformation update article
(published 15 April 2026).
Along with our progress on implementation of the TLFS, we have strengthened the reliability, timeliness and coherence of important labour market statistics.
Strong focus remains on improving our labour market statistics. As outlined in our recent
Labour Force Survey quality report
(published 20 January 2026), Labour Force Survey (LFS) response levels show clear improvement, with the survey changes now fully embedded and all waves now close to their pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level as a result. These improvements continue to be welcomed by users as they increase confidence in the LFS data until the transition to TLFS completes.
Work is under way to strengthen representativeness and understand potential employment-related variation in non-response bias by linking survey data with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI). Early results are providing useful insights and will be published later this year.
February 2026 saw the move of our labour productivity statistics and elements of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), away from legacy technology, improving sustainability, resilience and reliability. Labour productivity has also undergone methodological improvements relating to how hours and jobs data are constrained and seasonally adjusted, and are moving towards stronger methods with improved international comparability. This directly responds to user feedback and supports clearer interpretation of productivity.
National accounts and gross domestic product (GDP)
We have made meaningful progress on two areas that directly support the quality, relevance and trustworthiness of economic statistics and contribute to a more coherent and future‑ready statistical system.
As part our plans to develop natural resource depletion estimates to include in net domestic product under the System of National Accounts 2025 (SNA25), we have worked with stakeholders to clarify requirements and used existing research and data availability to develop a feasible approach to delivering depletion estimates, through our International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) Programme of work.
Research in partnership with independent experts, such as the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), to capture international best practice in relation to the balancing process which underpins GDP and other national accounts outputs has commenced. We have shared feedback on initial findings and are using this work to inform future operational improvements. Significantly, we have agreed a data‑sharing arrangement and suitable dataset for an ESCoE researcher to begin independent testing of balancing approaches. While this work will not result in immediate changes in published outputs, it will improve the foundations of reliability and coherence across the national accounts.
We have welcomed the
recent published compliance report by the OSR which looked at the topic of residual seasonality in GDP
. In our response we set out our commitment to publish an article on our approach to assessing residual seasonality as part of our quality assurance of GDP, while also making the non-seasonally adjusted GDP data available to users. This will also increase transparency of our approach to these complex topics.
By the end of April 2026, we will satisfy all aspects of the International Monetary Fund's Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus, the highest dissemination standard, which recognises the publication of comprehensive, timely, accessible and reliable economic and financial statistics.
Public sector
Our ongoing commitment to move to modern sustainable technology is helping establish a stable foundation for future improvements including adoption of new international guidance and classifications such as the System of National Accounts (SNA) and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC).
In March 2026, we successfully embedded our new central government processing system into the national accounts annual update process, largely removing our reliance on legacy technology for this part of our business. Reducing our reliance on legacy technology helps mitigate a longstanding operational risk, reducing fragility in the system and improving overall resilience across our public sector statistics.
Public sector finance statistics are reliant on inputs from across government and we have therefore launched initiatives to secure the quality of key inputs. We have formed a joint Local Government Financial Information Task Force with HM Treasury (HMT), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to improve the quality and timeliness of expenditure data by local authorities. This is a key input to both our public sector finance statistics and national accounts estimates.
We are also working closely with HMRC who are implementing improvements to quality assurance processes following an error with Value Added Tax (VAT) data in 2025 and we are feeding into their Statistics Review. In collaboration with HMT, OBR and others, we have also been working on the quality of our balance sheet statistic public sector net financial liabilities, initially focusing on updating estimates for public sector-funded pensions.
Trade and balance of payments
We have continued to make progress in developing new results processing systems across trade and balance of payments, which will allow us to move away from legacy technology, improving reliability and efficiency. The remaining foreign direct investment legacy systems have now been re-platformed and plans for remaining systems across trade and balance of payments - multi-year projects - are progressing as expected. Once completed, we can reinvest time saved into data analysis and curiosity to improve the quality of our statistics.
We have also made substantial progress against meeting requirements set out by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) including undertaking bias analysis of our trade in services estimates and we will be publishing a user guide to support interpretation and correct use of the UK trade statistics, particularly in the context of asymmetries. The bias analysis will be finalised shortly, and we will give full details of this analysis and an overall update to users of what we have done to meet the requirements set out by the OSR in June 2026. This, alongside progress to move away from legacy, are important steps towards us seeking reaccreditation of the UK trade statistics later this year.
Alongside colleagues in public sector statistics, we are also feeding into HMRC's internal statistics review - they are key data suppliers for trade in goods statistics - to identify areas for improvement. Joint workshops to interrogate the full end-to-end production cycle across HMRC and the ONS have already identified improvements that can be made to the quality assurance process. We will incorporate these, including automation of data transfer and ingest, as a priority into our plans.
International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS)
IMSS encompasses adoption of the latest international macroeconomic statistical standards in UK economic statistics.
It brings together updated frameworks such as SNA25 and Balance of Payments Manual 7th Edition (BPM7), plus related frameworks such as Government Finance Statistics (GFS) and System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). It also covers the classifications and standards that make the frameworks work in practice, including the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), Classification of Products by Activity (CPA), Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP), and international data transmission using Statistical Data and Metadata exchange (SDMX).
Over the past quarter, IMSS has focused on setting the foundations for major updates to the UK's economic statistics. We have clarified the scope of changes the UK intends to adopt from the updated international standards, and mapped the sequencing and dependencies needed to introduce them safely and coherently over the coming years. Our initial focus will be on GDP and current account-impacting standards that are most relevant to the UK.
Alongside this, we have made significant progress on the updated UK SIC, which defines how businesses are grouped by industry. This is a critical building block for future improvements underpinning changes to surveys, the business register and the industry detail that users rely on across economic statistics. A finalised version of the
updated UK SIC
has now been published and include a link to the article being published today or tomorrow.
Given the scale and complexity of delivering IMSS, we have established it as a formal ONS programme, strengthening organisation-wide visibility, accountability and coherence, and confirming its role as a strategic priority for the future.
Quality reviews
In January 2026, we completed our regular quality self-assessment, in which statistical teams evaluated their statistics using a structured framework to systematically identify areas for improvement. From April 2026 onwards, addressing the recent OSR recommendation to provide further information on our programme of quality reviews, we are introducing a systematic programme of end-to-end reviews, aligned with the Generic Statistical Business Process Model. This will also include reviews and lessons learnt exercises already established in response to errors.
Our updated approach will provide a clearer and more consistent way of understanding how each step of the statistical process affects the quality of the final output, and how best to deliver continuous improvement. These reviews will help us identify potential risks and highlight where improvements will deliver the greatest value for the users of our statistics.
While we refine the timing and scope of this programme of reviews, we are focusing on areas with the greatest user need, strategic relevance, risk, or potential impact. The criteria for prioritisation will be reviewed on a quarterly basis to maintain relevance. As this work develops, the insights we gather will guide more targeted improvements across our processes and outputs.
There is an inherent risk that the time required to conduct reviews and implement agreed improvements may place pressure on normal statistical production. Work is under way to determine how to manage these trade-offs and establish a prioritisation approach that upholds our principle of "quality over quantity".
Alongside this, we continue to implement the Process Excellence (PE) toolkit. PE encompasses a set of tools and skills that enables our statistical production teams to identify and resolve problems as they occur, supporting our continuous improvement ethos. Our Retail Sales Index (RSI) team have applied the PE toolkit and improved robustness of their processes, and we are now focused on supporting our foreign direct investment suite of statistics. This work is an integral part of quality improvements, aiming to improve skills, efficiency and sustainability, reducing risk.
Our data
We are taking steps to address gaps in how we govern and manage data across the organisation. In January 2026, we launched a new Data Governance Framework, and while there remains significant organisational change to fully embed this, there has been positive early progress.
Implementation is focusing on embedding new data ownership roles across the organisation and developing a new methodology to identify and map our most critical data sources. This approach has been successfully piloted to identify the critical sources supporting the Producer Price Index and population statistics. It will now be rolled out across all core statistical outputs and will enable the ONS to prioritise effort to manage the quality of these core sources.
This includes improving the quality and stability of existing administrative data sources that are used for core statistics, and exploring the value of additional data, particularly through linking survey and administrative data. The ONS is working with the OSR to arrange a workshop with key data suppliers, as part of the engagement on the new Code of Practice for Statistics to discuss the importance of quality controls when processing data that are supplied for headline economic statistics. This is aimed to support better quality assurance to mitigate issues being identified post-publication.
Alongside a focus on our existing data, we have convened a new Data Sources Board to ensure a coordinated and prioritised approach to sourcing new data. This Board has brought together knowledge and expertise to create an annual forward plan for the new data sources that the ONS is considering. We are seeking to improve the data coverage in the following areas over the next year.
Household and individual income
Administrative data on (self) employment, benefit and pension activity supports analysis of household earnings and income inequalities. The ONS can also improve the accuracy of population estimates, and understand trends in the labour market and broader economic inactivity. Our strategic focus over the next 12 months is to establish a sustainable data source to meet our needs.
Expenditure
In January 2026, we announced the addition of grocery scanner data into consumer inflation statistics to enhance our measurement of inflation. In the next 12 months, we are seeking to broaden our coverage to include further retailers and explore the value of the data to support broader economic outputs.
Aggregated and anonymised data on card transactions support the analysis of retail consumer spending by geography as well as providing evidence to understand real-time GDP. An additional supplier of data is being explored to broaden coverage and potentially provide more timely updates.
Price of energy and consumption of energy by households has potential utility for the creation of real-time indicators on energy supply, statistics on living costs and for enhancing our measurement of GDP and consumer prices.
Short- and long-term migration
Administrative data on the movement of UK and overseas nationals across local and UK borders for residence or employment would support our measurement of the resident population between censuses and adjustments to the Labour Force Survey.
Population
Anonymised data on patterns of population movement and mobility have potential utilisation to quality assure our mid-year estimates by observing if trends in population change at low geographies are due to real movements of people.
Data that indicate occupancy at an address, household composition or data that indicate whether occupants will take part online or need a paper form would enhance the ONS Address Register and Social Survey sampling frames.
This is not intended as an exhaustive list but gives insight on our priorities for the 2026 to 2027 period. We will provide updates on progress as part of future quarterly updates.
Our technology
As our plans continue to move us toward more modern technology, it is critical we do so in a consistent and coherent way. To support this, we have established a Strategic Design Committee, who have recently approved a first iteration of high-level, integrated target technology and data architecture to support our business.
As we move toward greater use of reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) and explore the use of AI in our statistics, we are also setting out assurance and standards to enable a consistent approach. To support this, in January 2026, we concluded a survey of ONS's code base to help provide a clear picture of our technology usage. We will use this to inform a future model for development and delivery, through continued collaboration between statistical and analytical colleagues, and data and technology experts.
Work continues across business surveys to explore ways to exploit existing technology and inform enhancements to our strategic platforms. Most recently we have established ways in which our Telephony Service can provide smarter dashboards and real-time insights, automation of simple tasks and practice messaging, to both support businesses and make operational efficiencies.
Research and development across complex annual surveys has prompted a series of discovery projects to explore future capability solutions for our online collection platform and our data processing system, to support an improved business experience and ensure quality data. This includes exploring self-service capability, which will also support the future transition of all surveys to strategic systems.
Our work continues to progress new capability on the Statistical Business Register (SBR), which remains a critical enabler for IMSS and legacy reduction. This is not withstanding some significant challenges, which are being supported by a recent health check to strengthen confidence in delivery.
Work is ongoing to realise opportunities within our social survey telephone interview technology, working towards removing failure points and increasing the efficiency of the operation, reducing our exposure to legacy, deprecated or disaggregated technical solutions, and working towards a more coherent technical architecture.
We are seeking to maximise opportunities for learning through testing and knowledge sharing, and how the census platforms may be suitable for future social surveys use as we seek a more unified enterprise approach to our technology.
Good progress has been made to develop an AI Strategy for Social Surveys. We are undertaking discovery work with partners in academia to scope AI opportunities to improve the efficiency and quality in social survey operations (including investigating opportunities around a social survey Digital Twins AI model). Strides are also being made in developing reproducible analytical pipelines (RAPs) around our social surveys, designed to improve efficiency and quality.
Our people
Maintaining a stable and engaged workforce remains critical to our recovery. Ongoing resourcing activity to support delivery of the Economic Statistics Plan (ESP) continues to make good progress.
Of the additional posts needed, 66% have people in post, a further 22% are onboarding (6% with an agreed start date) and a small number are in live recruitment. The remainder are expected to progress in line with the wider ONS business planning, using improved recruitment practices that are providing a more flexible and resilient pipeline of resource.
We are continuing to build on our successful and rapid expansion in new locations like Darlington and Manchester, where we are acquiring more of the critical skills needed to drive delivery of our recovery. We also continue to strengthen our focus on getting the best out of our people, with dedicated leadership focus on employee experience and technical capability building.
We remain committed to building the capability of our people and continue to set aside a period of protected learning time each month across our economic statistics teams to maintain momentum.
In 2025 to 2026, we successfully completed the second phase of our Skills Capture exercise, which provided a better understanding of our current level of critical analytical and digital skills we need to deliver. Over 2,000 colleagues have engaged with this phase of activity, which has given us a strong, data-driven picture of our current capability across coding, statistical methods, analysis and research.
We have also conducted a review on the technical capability learning we have available across the organisation, with a view of ensuring we have the best possible provision to build skills that we need now and in the future. We continue to invest in our entry routes into working in government analysis, with 27 colleagues joining our flagship degree apprenticeship "BSc (Hons) Applied Data, Statistical and Economic Analysis", in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, to provide a bespoke route to building our critical skills in line with our location strategy.
While implementing these improvements, we have invested in the capability of our teams, providing training and opportunities, including piloting of expert roles providing deep analysis of a topic, to improve analytical, assurance and technical skills as we move to adopt newer systems and processes. Career pathway pilots are being tested through business surveys to support deeper subject‑matter expertise, and results from the People Survey indicate growing confidence in development opportunities. This is reflected in a reduction in attrition over the last quarter. We continue to address workforce gaps, welcoming 61 new starters to business surveys during the period, supported by a strong recruitment campaign that attracted over 300 applications.
Recruitment of survey interviewers has expanded quickly to meet the ambitious aims of our recovery plans. We have stabilised our field community currently at a headcount of 850. Meeting our headcount target of 1,023 has been hampered due to attrition increasing in our field community, driven primarily by higher turnover among agency interviewers.
We have made significant progress on survey prioritisation to ensure resources are focused where they deliver the greatest statistical value. As part of this work, the Annual Population Survey (APS) boost in England has been reduced in the short term, as outlined in
recent correspondence
from the ONS to the UK Statistics Authority. This has enabled interviewer capacity to be reallocated to the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF), a survey that is central to the production of income, GDP and prices statistics, and which will receive increased case allocation from April 2026. While we have made strong progress in meeting our field community target, the next challenge is retaining our growing workforce. We are undertaking a number of initiatives to mitigate, which are outlined in the following section on Challenges.
Challenges
Delivering the improvements set out in our plans is a demanding, multi‑year task in a complex operating environment. As highlighted in our December 2025 update, progress depends on managing a set of interrelated risks over time, including workforce capacity, the scale and sequencing of complex change, and competing demands such as Census 2031.
We continue to work with real constraints: limited specialist capacity in areas such as digital, data and methodology, fiscal pressures requiring efficiency and value for money, and ongoing recruitment challenges. These risks remain but are better understood and more actively managed, as we balance improving quality with sustaining the delivery of essential statistics.
While good progress has been made since the last update, some challenges have been encountered, which have resulted in milestones not being achieved.
Some delays are not of concern at this stage, including ongoing business-as-usual improvements in our trade statistics, a small delay in confirming business prices plans as ONS planning concludes, and the ongoing replanning of survey quality reviews in line with the ONS Quality Review.
To manage delivery risk and assure outputs through parallel running, implementation of a modernised balance of payments geography processing system will now complete in September 2026. The replan is within tolerance and is a consequence of resource delay and system complexity. The delivery teams are reflecting on the latter with a view to implementing improvements to processes or practices as needed.
Significant milestones
The milestones of most significance are set out in this section along with the management actions in place.
Statistical Business Register (SBR) milestones will not be achieved this year due to delays in integrating systems needed for further sampling. Progress continues on this strategically important programme, but system integration complexities and the sequencing of work to build new capability and meet International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) requirements remain key constraints.
A recent deep dive has strengthened the evidence base for delivery, particularly across testing, integration and transition from legacy systems. We are undertaking a 10-week period of focused activity, overseen by a senior stakeholder group, to produce a robust, evidence-based delivery plan. Early alignment has been reached on a minimum feasible operating model, with phased adoption of the new register. An independent assurance review has further clarified deliverability challenges, and we are acting on its recommendations, including the 10-week plan to deliver the minimum viable product.
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) end-to-end legacy replacement is not fully achievable to the current timescale, with a better understanding of the complex system architecture and methods needed. We will, however, have removed all paper-based data collection from the survey and automated some of the manual processes involved in the data collection activities.
On the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) Programme, at the first evidence-led readiness assessment with users in July 2026, only one calendar quarter of data reflecting the latest set of design changes will have been collected, allowing for only limited quality assessment of their impact. A fuller update on the TLFS is provided in our latest
Labour market transformation update article
(published 15 April 2026).
Recruitment delays have slowed progress on labour accounts. Scoping and planning work is now under way and is expected to conclude by early May 2026, providing a clearer and more realistic delivery plan.
With our population statistics, in light of the decision to hold a census in 2031, we have reviewed our work on how we produce our regular population estimates. For the past few years, we have been working to build a system using more administrative data (such as health, tax and education records) that would not be reliant on a decennial census as the foundation. An assessment of the previously proposed administrative data-based mid-year population estimates has confirmed that we are not ready to move to the alternative methods for estimates in 2026.
We are reviewing the overall approach in the context of Census 2031 and reviewing milestones to see what improvements can be delivered in 2026 and beyond under a more continuous improvement approach.
There have also been broader challenges to delivery related to sustaining workforce capacity, improving statistical quality, complexity of using administrative data and sequencing complex transformation at pace.
Workforce capacity
While we have made strong progress in growing some of our skills, challenges remain and replanning was needed in some cases to accommodate delays in onboarding.
Sustaining a resilient field workforce continues to present risk to meeting current and future survey targets. In October 2025, attrition increased in the field community, driven primarily by higher turnover among agency interviewers, resulting in interviewer numbers stabilising at around 850 instead of the original 1,023 target.
To mitigate this, we have introduced a comprehensive programme of retention and workforce stabilisation measures. These include enhanced onboarding and training to reduce early attrition, the introduction of a retention award to support interviewer stability, expanded opportunities for agency interviewers to convert to ONS contracts, extensions to agency assignment durations, greater flexibility in working patterns, and more efficient deployment of interviewer capacity across surveys.
Work is also under way to explore the use of external fieldwork providers to supplement capacity where appropriate. Early indications show that attrition began to fall in March 2026 compared with the previous month. The number of leavers decreased from 37 in February to 25 in March, representing a reduction of approximately 30%. Since October 2025, we have also converted around 100 agency interviewers to ONS fixed‑term contracts, achieving 100% retention to date with these interviewers.
Specialist statistical, technical and methodological skills remain challenging to secure. Our efforts to improve recruitment and retention are key to ensuring we can manage this ongoing risk.
Improving statistical quality
Between December 2025 and February 2026, the monthly rate of corrections to our outputs remained generally consistent with the level observed during the preceding three-month period. There was a slight decrease in the number of errors considered significant for our users, with one recorded in December 2025. This is a reduction compared with four significant errors in the previous period.
An error in the processing of input data due to processing issues in one of the legacy systems used for our statistical production led to a correction in our productivity flash estimates statistics. The error caused small changes to the data but affected a few published bulletins. We have reviewed quality assurance processes for this output to ensure that any potential future instance of processing issues are promptly flagged and corrected before publication.
We continue to face challenges in relation to processing, lack of automation and quality assurance in legacy systems, as well as in some cases issues with the quality of data sources received by other government departments and devolved governments. These factors have contributed to some of the corrections in published outputs over the last six months.
While overall error rates have remained stable, work continues to strengthen collaboration across the public sector on the quality of data sources (for example, the Local Government Financial Information Task Force) and the continued importance of robust quality assurance and system modernisation efforts to minimise future errors.
Restoring confidence in the quality of key statistics remains a priority. While producer prices publication was reinstated in October 2025, accreditation has not yet been restored. The complexity and scale of work to achieve this will take time. We continue to invest in developing these statistics, as set out in our
Producer prices development plan
, to ensure improvements are well-founded and deliver sustained confidence for users.
On the TLFS, the short Core Survey (the streamlined, longitudinal, labour-market-focused questionnaire) continues to improve response quality by reducing partial household responses and increasing the number of fully responding individuals.
However, overall response rates and attrition have not yet improved in line with expectations, and some breakdowns, such as selected age and regional labour market status estimates and the precision of quarterly change estimates, are not yet meeting required quality standards.
Further improvements to response are expected following the introduction of data rotation (not re-asking the full questionnaire in each wave) and the increase of the conditional voucher incentive value from £10 to £20, so we will continue to monitor this as those changes embed. We are also exploring additional options to bolster response and strengthen quality should the design changes alone not deliver the required improvement.
We are working closely with users to refine criteria and conditions for transitioning from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to the TLFS ahead of the first evidence-led readiness assessment in July 2026.
Complexity of administrative data
The use of administrative data brings significant benefits for the ONS. For example, in consumer price statistics, where large datasets such as rail fares, second‑hand cars and grocery scanner data have improved quality and coverage. However, use of administrative data also creates ongoing challenges, and we need to ensure that we have reliable and stable data feeds to underpin the regular and timely production of our statistics.
To manage these risks, robust contingency plans are in place so we can respond effectively to any issues that arise and have adapted our quality assurance processes appropriately. These are ongoing challenges, which we will continually review and evolve our approach if required.
Sequencing complex, integrated transformation
International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) are a multiyear, tightly sequenced and highly integrated suite of change. Much of the activity to date is necessarily foundational and not yet visible in published statistics. Delivery is highly dependent on agreeing UK versions of some classifications, the new Statistical Business Register (SBR), major survey changes and significant end-to-end systems updates required. To address this, we are undertaking an internal assessment of technology options, including opportunities for greater self-service functionality, to support an accelerated and coordinated long-term transition.
Reflecting its complexity and importance, IMSS will be established as an ONS programme, ensuring strategic focus, accountability and improving coherence while maintaining proportionate assurance. It joins TLFS and business survey transformation as programmes enabling delivery of our plans.
As noted in the previous update, we continue to balance the delivery of economic statistics improvements and that of Census 2031. In the past quarter, some pressures across the two have been felt as demand for enabling services increases. This is being closely monitored and managed by ONS's Executive Committee.
Our plan sets out a significant amount of activity that impacts our people. Adopting a flexible approach to implementing small and complex change, investing in building our skills and the ability to set out plans over a three-year planning window are key.
Taken together, these challenges are being actively gripped through clearer prioritisation and strengthened governance. We remain focused on plausibility, undertaking regular scope and plan reviews to manage the risk of complexity, ensuring we balance pace with quality.
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Our progress, and that of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) allows us to look ahead with a degree of confidence. Setting out our priorities across statistical outputs has been a key step to enabling us to set out the ONS's business plan for the next three years.
We are integrating the Economic Statistics Plan (ESP) and Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan (SIEP) into a single improvement plan for economic statistics, reflecting the end-to-end nature of the work we do and simplifying stakeholder engagement. The plan will continue to focus on improving and maintaining the quality of our most critical statistics and comprise a mix of initiatives: continuous improvement across our production processes to deliver simpler, near-term changes, and longer-term, closely managed projects and programmes for more complex change.
As part of integrating the plans, we will rationalise and improve the milestones we set out and will ensure their impact is clear and measurable through a set of key performance indicators. These will build on the operational measures we currently, or soon will, publish on:
corrections to
major and severe errors tracked over time
survey sample response through the soon to be launched tracker that brings together key operational data, including response rates and achieved interviews over time for each survey
stakeholder sentiment derived from the
stakeholder satisfaction survey ONS undertakes
annually with users, which enables us to track overall levels of satisfaction with our delivery and engagement; while this provides a snapshot of sentiment across the range of our user base, we also seek more regular and timely feedback through different channels, particularly with key users, so we can respond accordingly
We will set out further details of our measures along with detailed delivery plans in our next quarterly update scheduled for July.
We must also ensure we have clear prioritisation, a strong approach to managing delivery and be aligned around our areas of greatest focus. We have set out here how we will do that as we bring ONS business planning to a conclusion. Our next update in July will provide a more detailed update.
Prioritisation
As part of our ongoing planning, we have established a framework (referred to as the "tiering model") to help manage publications, sequence where quality improvements should be addressed in the first instance, and support the allocation of resources of across the ONS. The current tiering model is based on the level of expected impact of an output for users and/or the decisions they inform, and has been informed by user feedback.
The tiering reflects a point in time for the ONS, and the model and tiered outputs will be reviewed regularly to ensure they remain reflective of our operating environment.
Using a waiting room to manage delivery and uncertainty
To protect delivery of our highest value work, we are introducing a structured "waiting room" approach to manage priorities and support sequencing. This recognises that not all priorities can be delivered at once, and that delivery confidence depends as much on capacity, timing and readiness as it does on importance.
The waiting room allows us to focus resources on the work that matters most now, while being clear and transparent about additional priorities that are important but not yet ready to move into delivery. This avoids over‑stretching teams, reduces delivery risk, and supports better outcomes for users. Work we are not starting immediately will be placed in the waiting room.
Work will enter delivery from the waiting room via our "delivery pipeline" mechanism that ensures conditions for success are in place. These conditions include the purpose and benefits of the work are well-understood, scope, dependencies and delivery approach are sufficiently defined, and the right skills and capacity are available without undermining higher value commitments.
Sequencing is a critical part of this approach. By controlling when work starts, we avoid too many priorities competing for constrained resource at the same time. This helps shore up delivery of the things we know matter most, improves delivery confidence, and reduces the risk of delays caused by stretched capacity.
Our priorities
As we work through the final stages of our business planning, confirming capacity in our enabling areas such as data and digital services, we are setting out both our critical priorities and the approach we are taking to our waiting room. This will help us sequence our work effectively and clearly sets out where we are making trade-offs.
We have agreed five priorities for the period ahead:
sustainable business-as-usual production of our portfolio of economic statistics, setting up our people for success and leaving time for them to invest in themselves
addressing quality issues, drawing on a new tiering framework that prioritises improvements to statistics that underpin critical decisions
transitioning to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS)
moving to a new Statistical Business Register (SBR), critical to improving our data quality, enabling delivery of the new International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) and reducing our reliance on legacy technology
setting a path toward implementing the core of IMSS through a newly established delivery programme, focusing first on those that are most relevant and material to UK gross domestic product (GDP) and the current account within the UK Balance of Payments
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This update demonstrates that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is moving onto a more stable footing, with real improvements now feeding through into key economic statistics. Although delivery remains complex, stronger prioritisation, improved governance and disciplined sequencing are increasing confidence and sustainability.
As ONS business planning for 2026 to 2029 concludes, our focus is on aligning capacity and priorities to protect delivery of the most critical statistics. Over the coming months we will consolidate our plans, ensuring they are realistic, well‑sequenced and set on a sustainable footing.
Our next update, due in July 2026, will reflect the outcomes of this planning. It will set out clear priorities, a refined and more realistic set of milestones, and a more developed suite of measures to track progress and impact. We will include further detail on our programme of quality reviews and our approach to managing legacy systems, in line with Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) recommendations.
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Office for National Statistics (ONS), released 15 April 2026, ONS website, article,
ONS economic statistics and surveys improvement plan, quarterly progress update: April 2026
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