Consultation outcome

Proposed changes to NDTMS annual reports and young people's report methodology: 2019

Updated 24 September 2019

1. Why we want to change the reports

Public Health England (PHE) is proposing to change the format of the national drug treatment monitoring system (NDTMS) annual reports to make them more accessible and appealing to current users and a new, wider audience.

The most recent adult annual report was 78 pages long, the young people’s report was 60 pages and the secure settings report was 71 pages. Documents this size can deter readers and important points can get overlooked.

So we would like to create shorter reports focused on:

• notable or changed items
• better graphical representation of data and infographics
• information on trends
• geographical mapping

Additional detailed data tables and a separate technical document will be published alongside each main report.

By reformatting the report, readers should be able to see relevant information quickly and easily, while still having access to the more detailed technical information.

We want the report itself to contain a smaller main section focusing on selected items such as the profile of people in drug and alcohol treatment, trends in substance use and the outcomes of treatment. Alongside that there will be additional documents including:

• data tables, like the ones we have provided for previous reports
• a technical document exploring data quality and methodological issues
• further background and policy context document

Much of the text contained in previous reports was merely breaking down each item with changes from the last report and differences by drug group, even when minimal change had happened since the previous report. We think this information could be better conveyed using tables and trend charts, and the text should focus on points of interest.

We also want to change the format to increase engagement with the general public, by making the document more accessible on mobile devices, and creating more shareable content. The best way to to this is for the report to be in HTML format, like many other publications on GOV.UK.

Here’s a blog which explains why HTML is a better format for online publishing.

Using infographics would help to make some of the data and the relationships between the data easier to understand. This would also be more in line with the approach taken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), NHS Digital and the government’s digital strategy.

2. What the annual reports might look like

These recent reports from the ONS and NHS Digital are good examples of how online statistical reports can be adapted to a more simplified and flexible format.

Deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales: 2017 registrations

Statistics on Alcohol, England 2019

Have a look at these to get an idea of how we are thinking of changing the NDTMS annual reports. The NDTMS reports will not be in the same format, because we will need to use the GOV.UK format, but these are good examples of statistical reports published in HTML, which are accessible on a range of devices.

We also intend to use more infographics in PHE alcohol and drug treatment statistics reports. We already use these in publications like Why Invest? and Health matters: preventing drug misuse deaths. We intend to make infographics like these available in the NDTMS annual reports or published alongside them.

We have included downloadable examples of what we could do with visual representation of the data in the annual reports. Please note that the NDTMS data in the infographics are for illustrative purposes only and the figures and graphs may not match published figures. Visual representations like these can be included in the annual reports or published alongside them.

3. Proposed changes to the young people’s report methodology

PHE is not currently intending to change the adult and secure settings report methodologies, but we would like to align the young people’s report method for identifying clients and categorising clients ages with the adult report method.

This would involve identifying clients using a combination of their initials, date of birth, sex and local authority. Currently they are only identified by initials, date of birth and sex. The current method means that two different clients living in different parts of the country could be identified as the same person. So we want to include this extra identifier to get a more accurate count of clients, in the same way as in the adult annual report and other young people’s reporting outputs.

We also want to align other related methodologies (such as calculating a client’s age) with the methodology used in the adult report. If this method had been applied for the 2017 to 2018 report, it would have led to an increase of around 2% in the number of clients.

Trend data would also be provided using the new methodology.

Respond to the consultation.