Official statistics are an essential economic and social asset, supporting decision making both inside and outside of government. They inform wider debate and allow the public to hold to account organisations that spend public money.
The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) promotes and safeguards the production, publication, quality and comprehensiveness of official statistics. We work effectively with, but are independent of, government, statistics producers and other stakeholders within a legal framework determined by the UK government.
The Office for Statistics Regulation is the regulatory arm of UKSA, providing independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK. Our priority is to give the public confidence in the trustworthiness, quality and value of statistics produced by government. We do this by:
• setting the standards that official statistics must meet in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics
• assessing how well statistics meet these standards and awarding National Statistics status to those that do
• calling attention to when the standards are met and challenging when they are not
• reporting on system-wide issues and on the way statistics are used
• reaching beyond traditional statistics to set expectations for how Government should communicate numbers to the public.