Guidance

Statistical work programme

Updated 17 July 2026

Introduction

The Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) statistical work programme, from the time of publication to the end of the financial year 2026 to 2027, covers the following: 

• statistical releases: an overview of DBT’s official statistics, an outline of upcoming substantive changes to official statistics, and a description of any new or discontinued official statistics
• departmental statistical plans: an outline of the cross-cutting statistical work impacting DBT’s official statistics

This work programme has been created in accordance with Standard 8.2 of the Office for Statistics Regulation’s Code of Practice 3.0.

For further information, read DBT’s Statement of code compliance.

Statistical releases 

DBT publishes a range of statistics covering topics such as:

• business populations
• building materials
• small business surveys
• international trade
• strategic export controls
• foreign direct investment (FDI) and inward investment

 View the latest published and upcoming statistics for DBT. 

The following tables summarise any significant changes to official statistics and new or discontinued official statistics in the period from the publication of this work programme to the end of the financial 2026 to 2027. This information is correct at the time of publishing.  

Changes to official statistics

Table 1: Changes to official statistics

Statistic name	Summary of change	User requirements
Inward Investment	Introduction of a new statistical table containing Industrial Strategy Sector breakdown for all FDI projects and for supported FDI, as Official Statistics in Development.	The new statistics give both the department and others the opportunity to understand how investment into the UK is aligned with the 8 sectors set out in the Industrial Strategy.
National Survey of Businesses (formerly National Survey of Registered Businesses)	The National Survey of Businesses (NSB) expands the remit of its predecessor survey, for wider coverage of DBT’s objectives. This includes subject matters relating to firmographics, business sentiment, and perceptions of DBT policy areas. The survey is agile and allows for greater flexibility, with some question changing between waves and others removed or amended to better reflect evolving stakeholder needs. The changes follow a public consultation on changes to the NSRB. The NSB will be published quarterly.	The NSB will provide more timely insights to support policy and decision-making, with broader coverage of business sentiment across DBT’s objectives.

New official statistics

Table 2: New official statistics

Statistic name	Description	User requirements
Large businesses’ payment practices and performance statistics	Large UK business performance in paying suppliers, covering the proportion and value of invoices paid late, the average time to pay, and the number of valid reports submitted by large businesses that this is based on. This is broken down by sector and region.	While users can search the published data on large business payments, the reporting does not include any summary statistics, making it difficult to understand reporting large businesses’ payment behaviour.
Quarterly export wins	Year-to-date total volume and value of validated Export Wins up to the latest financial quarter, alongside the standalone totals for the latest financial quarter.	To support transparency and provide a high-level view of DBT-supported export activity, as part of a wider set of performance indicators.

Discontinued official statistics

At the time of publishing, no DBT official statistics were being discontinued in the financial year 2026 to 2027.

Departmental statistical plans 

As well as producing, publishing and developing the statistical series outlined in this publication, work is also undertaken to further develop our official statistics and DBT’s wider evidence base, and improve approaches to producing statistics, including driving quality. This cross-cutting work is outlined as follows. 

Developing DBT’s evidence base 

The Government Analysis Function produces a series of themed workplans, which inform the production of DBT statistics. The GSS Trade Workplan is particularly important among these, as it sets out DBT’s plans for developing new measures of trade. 

DBT’s areas of research interest is a statement of our evidence priorities and an open invitation for engagement with the research and innovation community to enhance DBT’s evidence base. This includes improvements to data and statistics. 

Improving quality   

DBT has a commitment to improving quality in its statistical outputs. The following are examples of how DBT is delivering this: 

Reproducible Analytical Pipelines 

DBT has a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP) strategy, aiming to increase automation and reproducibility of our outputs, in line with the Government Analysis Function’s Quality assurance of code for analysis and research. As part of this strategy, DBT offers internal mentoring, training and guidance to aid the implementation of RAPs across its outputs. 

Statistical Quality Maturity Model 

The Statistical Quality Maturity Model (SQMM) is a framework for assessing statistical quality at an output level. All official statistics at DBT are subject to biennial assessments using the SQMM across 5 themes:

• sources
• methods and systems
• processes
• quality
• users, reputation and people

From this, a Statistical Quality Maturity Index is produced for each output, as well as action plans to drive quality improvement. Such an index is also produced at a department level to assess quality culture in DBT overall. This helps instil a continuous improvement culture across DBT. 

Quality assurance 

DBT holds an internal Quality Assurance Framework, which applies to all forms of evidence and analysis within DBT, including statistics. Fpr further details, read DBT’s Quality Management Approach. 

Accessibility 

DBT has several measures to make its statistics as accessible as possible. For further details, read our Accessibility statement for DBT statistics. 

Intelligent transparency and Code of Practice 3.0 

In accordance with the new Code of Practice 3.0, released by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) in October 2025, DBT has published the following documents on our DBT standards for official statistics webpage: 

• Statement of code compliance
• Release practice policy
• Revisions and corrections policy
• Data management approach
• Confidentiality policy
• Quality management approach
• Annual statistical work programme
• Public involvement and engagement strategy

The new code of practice provides more emphasis on ’intelligent transparency’, with the introduction of a standard for the public use of statistics, data and wider analysis. As such, DBT has been conducting internal workshops to improve statistical awareness across the whole department.

In addition, DBT has a Control of Statistics group, whose mandate is to mitigate the risk of inappropriate use or handling of statistics, and to minimise public criticism and reputational damage to DBT. More details on DBT’s approach to intelligent transparency can be found as a case study of best practice in the Office for Statistics Regulation review of intelligent transparency 2025. 

Contact information 

We welcome your questions and views on our statistical work programme.

You can contact us at statistics@businessandtrade.gov.uk. 

We would encourage users to engage directly with the publication teams for any comments on specific developments. 

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).