Guidance

Confidentiality policy

Updated 28 April 2026

Confidentiality Policy

Protecting the confidentiality of individual and business information is a priority for statistics producers at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). This policy sets out our approach to confidentiality in the production and publication of official statistics. It should be used in conjunction with our Data Management Policy.

DESNZ’s Personal Information Charter contains more information about individuals’ rights in relation to personal data, how to complain and how to contact the Data Protection Officer. All DESNZ privacy notices are published here.

Types of confidential data

The data we collect for statistical purposes does not contain names of individuals and we hold a very limited amount of sensitive data^{[footnote 1]}. However, some of our datasets could potentially be used to identify individuals or households.

In addition to data on individuals, we collect commercially sensitive data from companies in the energy sector.  We also use administrative data, for example from government benefits or grant schemes, which can include property information. Some of DESNZ energy schemes are targeted at low-income households so data from these schemes could be used to infer household income levels.

Confidentiality principles

To ensure confidentiality, we:

• keep confidential information secure and restrict access to trained staff who understand their responsibilities under data protection laws (see our Data Management Policy)
• set out confidentiality undertakings to data providers
• balance privacy protections with the need to produce useful statistics. This includes applying disclosure control to statistics where needed to prevent identification of individuals, or the release of confidential information
• share confidential statistical data with other organisations for specific purposes and with appropriate record keeping and governance

Disclosure control

Individual and household data

We apply statistical disclosure control techniques where there is a reasonable risk of personal information being identified by a motivated intruder.  These vary depending on the context, including the level of geographic disaggregation, which affects the risk of disclosure.

• for results based on sample surveys, such as the Public Attitudes Tracker and Fuel Poverty statistics (which is based on the English Housing Survey), we suppress results based on small numbers for quality reasons. This also mitigates the risk of disclosure
• for statistics on government funded energy schemes, suppression or rounding is applied to geographically disaggregated data and more potentially sensitive variables, such as cost, to minimise the risk of a household being identified
• subnational energy consumption statistics based on individual meterpoint data are presented for areas with a minimum cell count of 5. In addition, if the top two consuming meters at a geographical level have >90% of the total consumption then the meters are moved to the ‘unallocated’ category

Business data

Many of our business surveys are carried out under the Statistics of Trade Act, or similar legislation, which prohibits disclosure of individual business information without consent. Our published results are aggregated to obscure commercially sensitive information which is not already in the public domain.

There are some cases where results for individual companies could be identified because they are dominant in their sector. These are handled on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether the information published is already in the public domain. If it is not, disclosure control is applied.

Our data collection processes are designed to ensure that companies cannot see information about other companies.

Data sharing

Data will only be shared beyond the immediate team processing the data where:

• the necessary data handling conditions and security requirements are met
• the agreement under which data was collected allows this
• there is appropriate data governance and data sharing agreements in place
• there is a lawful basis for sharing personal data
• there is a legal gateway for sharing personal data

We deposit data into the Secure Research Service and other Trusted Research Environments through appropriate data governance and data processing agreements. Specific projects by accredited researchers in these environments are approved on a case-by-case basis.

1. Some of the survey data we use includes ethnicity ↩