Guidance

National Statistics status of reported road casualties statistics

Updated 28 September 2023

1. National Statistics status

National Statistics status means that our statistics meet the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and public value, and it is our responsibility to maintain compliance with these standards.

These statistics were first designated as National Statistics by the UK Statistics Authority in assessment report number 4 in July 2009. The statistics were reassessed in reported number 258 in July 2013.

The designation of reported road casualties statistics as National Statistics was further confirmed in August 2019 following a compliance check against the Code of Practice by the Office for Statistics Regulation.

2. Changes to these statistics

Since the latest review by the Office for Statistics Regulation, we have continued to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, and have:

  • developed a methodology with the ONS Methodology Advisory Service to adjust for the discontinuity in severity reporting as detailed in the 2017 interim report and in the 2018 final report
  • started analysing the impact of the introduction of online reporting of road accidents in road casualty statistical releases
  • innovated our dissemination methods by developing a tool for users to access and query the road safety data by producing bespoke tables
  • added more contextual commentary on other road safety data sources to the road casualty statistical releases to assess the coherence of absolute numbers and trends in casualties in the police reported data