Forthcoming changes and feedback request
Updated 28 September 2023
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reported-road-casualty-statistics-background-quality-report/forthcoming-changes-and-feedback-request
This note provides a high level overview of forthcoming changes to the department’s road safety data and statistics which may affect users of the statistics.
Should any of the proposed changes cause concern, please contact the road safety statistics team via the details below.
Forthcoming changes for 2023 datasets onwards
File and variable names
File and variable names in the open datasets and supporting documentation that use the word accident will be changed to collision in publications from the November 2023 release of provisional data for the first half of 2023.
E-scooter open data
The separate e-scooter dataset will be dropped in 2024 and the information will be added to the vehicles table.
Severity codes
Additional 5-point severity codes will be added to the collision and casualty records (splitting the serious category into very serious, moderately serious and less serious).
Current revisions policy - request for feedback
The department’s long-established policy for STATS19 data is that once a year of data has been finalised (typically alongside the publication of Reported Road Casualties Great Britain at the end of September each year) it is not routinely revised. The data within STATS19 represents the best available data at the time the database was closed. In the case of fatalities, it can be the case that there are outstanding coroner verdicts, which, once received may change whether a record should or should not be within scope of STATS19.
This approach has strengths and weaknesses. It means that the historic time series of data does not change as more data is added (aside from the severity adjustments) avoiding the need to revise baselines for monitoring progress, for example. It also provides a focus for reporting police forces to provide final data to the department. It is likely that any changes following closure of the dataset will be small in number (for fatal or more serious collisions) and not affecting national level trends or conclusions drawn.
However, this approach does mean that some cases which subsequently prove to be within scope of STATS19 are excluded, and vice versa. This can result in small discrepancies between the department’s database and those held by local authorities, or individual countries within Great Britain, where later revisions may be made.
Changes to the department’s processing systems mean that it is now possible to consider making more routine revisions to earlier years of data. At this stage, we have no plans to change the current approach, but would greatly welcome views from users of the STATS19 data on whether such a change would be considered welcome, or otherwise. This will help to inform our future thinking in this area.
Feedback can be provided to the road safety statistics team via our user feedback survey or via the contact details below, and the team would be happy to engage in more detail if that would be helpful.
We also welcome any comments from users on how we might improve the completeness of STATS19 data items, to help us fill tough null values where data is missing.
Road safety statistics