Guidance

Government Response to the independent review of the UK Statistics Authority (recommendation 5)

Updated 25 March 2026

Introduction

Comparable UK-wide data is key to telling the story of the unique experiences of people in every part of the UK. It allows decision makers to draw insights on what works in public policies across the UK, to better evaluate the things we do, and to support smarter decision-making as a result. But improving the availability and use of UK-wide data is complex and multifaceted. While in the past, national surveys comprised the most significant data source for governments, our increasing reliance on administrative data, typically produced by non-statisticians as a by-product of the provision of government services at the regional or even local level, makes it more difficult to guarantee harmonisation across the UK. That is particularly the case because as the four governments have pursued divergent approaches to our shared policy challenges, administrative data collected at the country, regional, and local level has also diverged to meet local needs – particularly in heavily devolved areas, such as education and health.

The consequence is that a lack of comparable UK-wide data in many devolved areas hinders meaningful comparisons across the UK, depriving researchers and policymakers alike of the opportunity to understand differences in outcomes across the UK. The complexity of our statistical system and profound resource disparities between our four statistical agencies compound the challenge further still.

In March 2024, the government published the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), led by Professor Denise Lievesley CBE. Its vivid articulation of the UK statistical system offered a powerful, independent insight into the work still required to address the challenges of our statistical system in order to deliver on the promise of a data-driven future. Since then, the UKSA, together with the UK’s four national governments, have worked hard to deliver on Professor Lievesley’s recommendations.

There is still more to do. Recommendation 5 of the Lievesley Review called on the four governments, and the UKSA, to come together to address the challenge of comparable data. It asked the UKSA to build on existing work, lead discussions between the four nations, and strengthen the Concordat on Statistics – the existing agreed framework for inter-governmental cooperation on data comparability. It urged the creation of common standards and improved harmonisation, where appropriate and mutually agreed between the four governments. Since then, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has published its own Systemic Review of the adequacy of UK-wide statistics, building on many of the Lievesley Review’s findings and providing action-focused recommendations - again underlying the ongoing challenge of comparable data. The case for change was also echoed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s May 2024 report, Transforming the UK’s Evidence Base, and the report of the first UK Statistics Assembly, convened in January 2025.

At the time of its publication, the UK government issued a high-level response welcoming the Lievesley Review’s findings, and setting out the government’s intention to provide this more detailed response to Recommendation 5 separately, acknowledging the long-running and complex nature of the challenge of UK-wide data.

Our response today sets out the steps that the statistical leaders from all four nations, led by the UKSA, will now take as we respond directly to Professor Lievesley’s findings and those of the OSR’s systemic review. It outlines our plans to tackle the challenge of comparable data together – with strengthened frameworks founded in principles of trust, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to supporting smarter, more informed public policy for the communities we serve.

In preparing this response, the UK government has worked closely with analytical colleagues in the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), and the UKSA itself. The response sits alongside separate responses previously published by the UKSA and by the Scottish Government. The actions set out here reflect that collaborative approach, and have been co-designed to respect the devolved responsibilities of each administration. As a Non-Ministerial Department, the UKSA is operationally independent from the UK government. Where this response sets out specific steps that the UKSA will now take, those commitments have been agreed in full by the UKSA.

1. A more strategic direction 

Much of the work to improve the comparability of UK-wide statistics is delivered through project-level initiatives undertaken across the Government Statistical Service (GSS), in line with the OSR’s Code of Practice. Shaped by the priorities of individual departments and the Devolved Governments, this work has yielded tangible progress, ranging from the analysis of health statistics comparability to the development of interactive tools for UK-wide health and care data. The GSS UK-wide and coherence team plays a vital convening and coordination role, gathering insight on the areas of shared priority and providing strategic-level oversight to help identify opportunities and mitigate duplication. But this work operates primarily on a project-by-project basis within bespoke governance arrangements. While some projects have been designed to deliver new UK-wide data, most are focused on understanding and explaining existing differences, rather than systematically addressing them.

The Lievesley Review is clear that “… a change in approach is required to ensure that the statistical system is effective across all four administrations of the UK”. The OSR’s review concurs. It finds that “the GSS coherence work will not on its own be sufficient to achieve meaningful UK-wide comparability across a range of priority measures”.

The UK Statistics Authority Board in setting out their strategic priorities for the UK statistical system in their recent October 2025 letter “… requests from the IAC [Inter-Administration Committee] articulation of its vision for maximising the opportunities of cross-UK collaboration”. The statistical leaders from each nation will come together via the IAC to set out a multi-year strategic vision for UK-wide statistics and long-term priorities, paving the way toward a strengthened system of governance and accountability for the production of agreed coherent and comparable UK-wide data on priority topics at the national, regional, and local levels. 

GSS coherence teams are already engaging extensively across the four nations - both within government and beyond - to better understand the specific needs and potential use cases for comparable data. Under the direction of the IAC, and its new strategic vision, the GSS will continue to lead that engagement, building on our four governments’ stated needs to identify strategic priorities for comparable data at the national, regional, and local levels. To inform these priorities, the GSS will work collaboratively across producer departments to assess the comparability of priority statistics and may wish to use the comparability framework tool produced by the Fraser of Allander Institute and endorsed by the OSR as part of their review into the adequacy of UK-wide statistics. Use of this comparability framework, or similar, would align with the renewed Code of Practice for Statistics (PDF, 378KB) (Autumn 2025), which calls for producers of Official Statistics to “explain quality issues […] including the extent to which the statistics are representative and comparable across the UK and internationally”.

Our multi-year statistical coherence plan, described above, will encompass a long-term strategy for the production and maintenance of comparable UK-wide data on selected priority measures - addressing both work to improve the coherence of statistical outputs as well as improving coherence of data inputs. The IAC will work hand-in-hand with statistical leaders across the four nations to ensure that the strategy is based on UK-wide commitment and is reflective of the devolved priorities. The IAC will monitor the progress of the development and maintenance of priority measures on an ongoing basis, revisiting its assessment of users’ needs for comparable UK-wide statistics in the process.

2. Strengthening the Concordat on Statistics

The current governance arrangement for improving the availability and use of comparable UK-wide data and statistics rests heavily on the Concordat on Statistics – the voluntary framework, setting out how the four governments and the UKSA will work together in relation to UK-wide statistics. But while the Concordat aspires to meet user needs for coherent and comparable UK-wide data, it, in practice, serves primarily as a framework for engagement. Recognising the diverse policy contexts across the UK, it encourages the development of equivalent statistics and interoperable data platforms where feasible, but stops short of setting out a comprehensive, long-term strategy. While the IAC is given the responsibility of promoting statistical and structural coherence across the four administrations and resolving interadministration issues, the Concordat lacks strategic-level prioritisation, or robust mechanisms for the ownership and governance of its commitments, nor any mechanism for managing statistical resources across the UK. 

The Lievesley Review concludes that “At the very least, the Concordat should be strengthened to enable better UK-wide data…” Under its existing terms, the next review of the Concordat is due in 2026 – five years on from its last update. Led by the GSS under the direction of the IAC and the National Statistician, once in post, the four governments and the UKSA will begin that process – strengthening the Concordat to better deliver on the strategic vision to be set out by the IAC. In addition to examining the wider effectiveness of our existing governance arrangements, the review should consider a new, strategic-level role for the IAC to enable delivery of their vision for maximising the opportunities of cross-UK collaboration. This should include enhanced governance to strengthen and standardise the ways we mutually agree which data areas are prioritised for comparability, how we monitor comparability going forward, and how that progress is reported publicly. That role will be aimed at supporting the development of a multi-year structural coherence plan and a standardised framework for collaboration, as we identify, prioritise, and resource statistical and structural coherence projects. The reviewers may also wish to consider how technological, professional, and cultural changes should be better incorporated into our revised Concordat – for example the increasing shift toward general administrative data for statistical purposes. In the process of revising the Concordat, reviewers may also wish to consider how the roles of the UK-wide Evidence and Analysis Steering Board and of the UK Statistics Assembly should be formally enshrined in our systems of governance.

3. Voluntary common standards

Reflecting an accurate picture of the nations and regions they serve will always be the foremost priority of analytical and statistical professionals. Developing policy that suits communities’ unique local contexts and evaluating those policies in ways that make sense are the building blocks of our devolved system of government.

There are however circumstances in which it is logical for the four nations to come together to establish common data standards, as envisaged by the Lievesley Review – enabling all four governments to not only access UK-wide data, but to understand it in a common language that is intelligible across data architectures. Through the GSS Harmonisation team the four governments are already working to establish such standards in some, limited areas – including on the core attributes of a person. Nonetheless, current efforts face some systemic challenges. Without a formal governance model for determining areas that would benefit from common standards, designing those standards, and then ensuring they are useful across their lifecycle, work instead relies on informal relationships with patchy engagement, and little clarity as to who will adopt the standards, and how they will be managed and revised going forward. Because some metrics are profoundly cross-cutting (for example, how names are captured in data architecture), no one government department can meaningfully influence UK-wide alignment on some datapoints. Where new data standards have been developed in the past, engagement between our four governments has occasionally been late or inconsistent.  

Mandatory reporting requirements that limit governments’ choice and capacity to design policies that best suit their local needs will never be a part of our strategic governance arrangements for UK-wide data. Nonetheless, it is clear that an improved process is necessary to maximise the value of common standards, where they are deemed useful. The support of the Government Digital Service and Government Chief Data Officer is also key in promoting and aligning data standards across the public sector. Working with the Data Standards Authority, the UKSA will now test a formal governance model for common standards and, if necessary, reflect this model in the revised Concordat. That governance model will, at the very least, create clear norms around how, when, and why standards are produced, adopted, and regulated across their lifecycle. With clear UKSA leadership and meaningful, formalised relationships among our four governments, standards will never be based simply on ‘how things are done in England’, but reflect a genuinely UK-wide standard that is maximally applicable to the data needs of all four nations, and is achievable with our respective data architectures. Standards will always be voluntary, with the OSR left to determine compliance with the code of practice.

4. Improved capability

Crucial to supporting the implementation of the revised Concordat, and the working of any future common standards, will be promoting to all analytical colleagues the importance of data coherence, recognising its relevance in their respective work areas, and supporting them to be comfortable working with colleagues in other governments to improve comparability. The UK Government has already published guidance to that effect, providing an important resource in the first instance. There is however, still more that we can do to support colleagues’ capability across our four governments. That is particularly the case because, as operational and general administrative data plays an increasingly significant role in our systems of evaluation, datasets are increasingly governed by managers of operational data systems. Operational data managers are frequently non-statisticians, and often do not immediately recognise themselves as even belonging to the statistical system.

The ONS training “Devolution Awareness for Analysts”, is the existing training offer for ONS colleagues, mandatory for analysts within the organisation. As well as refreshing our publicly available guidance, statistical leaders will now make the ONS’s training offer available to all GSS and wider Government Analysis Function colleagues. The shift toward general administrative data highlights the need for that training offer to extend beyond the statistical profession alone, and to ensure that all colleagues involved in the production of data properly understand their role within the wider statistical system. Statistical leaders in each nation will therefore ensure that training is available and appropriately marketed beyond the GSS.

To further build capability, statistical leaders will establish and enshrine in the new Concordat, a regulated system of UK-wide shadowing and secondments to ensure that where human resources are available, sufficient mechanisms exist to deploy colleagues where they are most needed.

5. Resourcing

Barriers to the development of UK-wide data and statistics are compounded by the relatively smaller size (compared to the ONS) of the devolved statistical agencies, who naturally must prioritise the requirements of their devolved policy demands, and of their user communities. Funding arrangements for the UKSA are a matter between the UKSA’s senior leadership and HM Treasury, while funding arrangements for the devolved agencies are a matter for their respective governments.

The 2026 revision of the Concordat on Statistics however, offers an opportunity to revisit how resources are effectively and equitably distributed among the four statistical agencies. In the process of revising our wider governance arrangements, statistical leaders from each nation will ensure that efficiencies are maximised, unnecessary duplication eliminated, and that a standardised system is in place to ensure that when new statistical coherence requirements are identified, the resourcing work is fair and proportionate to the relative size of each delivery partner.  

6. Data sharing

An important part of ensuring departments are adequately resourced to deliver on the requirements of our revised Concordat, will be improving our systems of data sharing. Of the many stakeholders invested in the adequacy of comparable UK-wide data, each operates with slightly nuanced governance and legal frameworks, with varying technological capabilities, human and financial resources. Often, the existing legal frameworks for data sharing are imbalanced, ineffective, or simply constraining on departments’ capacity to generate comparable UK-wide insights. Even where there are legal frameworks in place to enable data sharing there are notable exceptions: health data, for instance, is excluded from the data sharing arrangements of the Digital Economy Act 2018. Similarly, only data for which ONS has an explicit purpose or use can be first acquired by ONS to be onwardly shared with a Devolved Government under the DEA.  

The specific legal frameworks in operation in each nation are matters for their respective legislatures. But to support governments to identify and tackle legal barriers to effective data sharing, the GSS under the direction of the IAC, will conduct a review of the legal frameworks governing data sharing and access across the UK. The review will be aimed at identifying imbalances in our existing legal frameworks and, if necessary, legislative changes that could further support data sharing, access, and capability across the UK.