ONS surveys and economic statistics improvement plan, quarterly progress update: July 2026

This third update on the Office for National Statistics’s (ONS’s) improvement plans for surveys and economic statistics marks a step change in how we are managing and reporting delivery. It reflects the outcome of organisation-wide business planning for 2026 to 2029 and the move from separate improvement plans towards an integrated Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio. Our SES portfolio will bring together ongoing delivery, improvement activity and enabling work in a more disciplined and transparent way.

Since our April 2026 update, we have continued to focus on the areas that matter most for the quality and trustworthiness of our statistics. Organisation-wide business planning has helped put the SES portfolio on a firmer footing by refining priorities, resetting milestones and clarifying what can be delivered this financial year, where further development is needed, and where activity must wait until dependencies or capacity constraints are resolved. We have also agreed the main objectives for the portfolio and identified the indicators that will support more consistent performance reporting over time, providing greater transparency over priorities, risks and delivery confidence.

The quarter has also seen substantive delivery across several priority areas.

• We have strengthened the Statistical Business Register (SBR) programme of work by moving to an iterative delivery model with early benefits that are now already being deployed through enhanced search capability; the next phase focuses on controlled adoption, system integration and building confidence for wider use.

• Early data from the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), following the implementation in April of the final elements of agreed design improvements, indicates improved response rates, particularly in later waves, and fewer partial returns. This sets the scene for an assessment that we will publish in August of our readiness to transition to the TLFS as the headline measure for labour market statistics in 2027.

• In National Accounts, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) accreditation of UK Statistics meeting Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) Plus marks progress made in strengthening international reporting and the accessibility of financial statistics.

• Publication of a broader package on gross domestic product (GDP) residual seasonality in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) has improved transparency on methods, evidence and interpretation.

• The move of the remaining Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) sample to digital-first collection has reduced operational cost and risks, and accelerated data collection and processing.

• Further progress has also been made in our prices, and public sector statistics, and in planning for implementation of the International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards.

Our new set of key performance indicators show important progress over the past year, with fewer errors in the production of statistical outputs since our last update, including no major ones, further increases in achieved interviews, and achieved official statistics accreditation for Business Enterprise Research and Development by the Office for Statistics Regulation. Our latest pulse survey shows an increase in engagement by staff.

Set against that, the recent Labour Force Survey (LFS) interviewer allocation issue in May has demonstrated the complexities of sustaining the demanding LFS and TLFS dual run and the need to strengthen our operational processes. Our weekly interview performance has since recovered fully. A lessons-learned exercise will ensure we look broadly at how we can use the experience to strengthen our survey operations. We are quantifying the impact of a smaller number of achieved household interviews in May and the subsequent increase in imputed data in the LFS dataset. We will publish the results of this work, alongside the latest statistics, in July, as part of our regular quality assessment of the LFS.  

This publication also outlines our major deliverables for the year ahead. Over the next year, we are setting out to make further improvements to statistical quality, user relevance, operational resilience, and delivery confidence across surveys and economic statistics. We aim to do this by:

• progressing to the Transformed Labour Force Survey as our main headline measure for labour market statistics in 2027, and migrating main labour market systems away from legacy technology

• embedding the Statistical Business Register as the default for register search and view activity, while progressing controlled adoption for sampling and wider system integration

• preparing for implementation of priority international standards, including Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2026, Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) 2026, Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018, and Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX)

• incorporating the Annual Survey of Goods and Services into this year’s Blue Book to improve the methodological basis for estimating GDP by better accounting for the UK service sector  

• moving in line with international best practice for productivity statistics by making the new ‘component-based’ approach our method underpinning our headline statistic

• strengthening quality across social and business surveys through the recovery of household financial surveys and expanding account management for important businesses

• modernising priority systems and methods across trade and Balance of Payments, prices, public sector statistics, National Accounts, and GDP

• improving the use of administrative and alternative data sources, including Value Added Tax, Real Time Information Pay As You Earn, Foreign Direct Investment sampling changes, and the Digital Economy Survey pilot

• ensuring that the necessary work is undertaken so that our priority statistics are ready for assessment against the standards required for accredited official statistics status, where accreditation is suspended or reaccreditation remains an important objective, including producer price inflation and UK trade 

• building a new "thematic account" describing the contribution of Artificial Intelligence to the UK economy and developing a broader development plan to improve the account

This is the third quarterly update on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) work to improve surveys and economic statistics. It builds on the progress reported in April 2026 and reflects a further stage of consolidation as improvement activity is aligned more closely with the ONS Business Plan for 2026 to 2029.

The July update marks a shift from early recovery into a tighter and more integrated phase of portfolio management. The Economic Statistics Plan (ESP) and Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan (SIEP) represent the foundations for this work, but the way activity is now being planned and governed has evolved. The Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio now has a clearer end-to-end view of what is in active delivery, what is being developed for future delivery, and how resources are being directed to protect the quality and resilience of critical outputs. Work is ongoing to validate assumptions and dependencies, strengthen the link between milestones and intended outcomes, and ensure delivery plans reflect the organisation’s capacity to absorb change. Users should therefore treat the milestones and delivery plans in this update as our current best assessment of priorities, sequencing and confidence. We will continue to refine these plans in light of further assurance and the experience of delivery.

This change ensures a more transparent account of what is improving, what remains challenging, and how the ONS is making choices in an environment of constrained capacity and significant interdependencies. This update is intended not only to describe activity, but also to explain how change is being sequenced, where confidence has strengthened, and where further work is needed before delivery can proceed.

We are also developing a more disaggregated view of the costs associated with delivering surveys and economic statistics, including indicative estimates of the cost of producing our most critical statistics. This will link financial information more closely to the activities that drive those costs, complement existing organisational financial reporting, and support more transparent portfolio management. We are working to include this information in our next update.

The SES portfolio is focused on a clearer set of intended outcomes and supporting objectives. At the highest level, these outcomes focus on:

• improving the quality and trustworthiness of our surveys and economics statistics portfolio 

• delivering a suite of relevant and timely surveys and economic statistics and data in line with user expectations 

• developing the skills, broader capabilities, people-focused culture, processes and infrastructure to continuously deliver and improve our portfolio of surveys and economic statistics 

The supporting objectives set out a path to achieving those outcomes, including:

• delivering our agreed business-as-usual outputs according to the agreed publication schedule (where relevant), applying effective stakeholder, risk and quality management

• delivering clearly prioritised and well‑sequenced improvements to our statistics, underpinned by transparent, consistent and proportionate governance 

• delivering the Transformed Labour Force Survey and the Statistical Business Register in line with agreed plans

• developing identified core elements of International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards aligned to the organisationally agreed outcomes

• building a positive, inclusive and people-focused culture in Surveys and Economic Statistics, where individuals and teams work together collaboratively, efficiently and effectively, and feel engaged, empowered and supported in the part they play in delivering our surveys and economic statistics

• developing the skills, broader capabilities, processes and infrastructure necessary to deliver our priority outputs and change initiatives efficiently and effectively to ensure they are fit to meet future user need 

Together, these outcomes and objectives provide a clearer basis for prioritisation, performance reporting and decisions about what should be in delivery now, what should be developed further, and what should remain in the waiting room (See Section 5: The waiting room for more detail). Providing quarterly updates is part of the ONS’s response following the Devereux Review and the Office for Statistics Regulation’s (OSR) Systemic Review of Economic Statistics produced by the ONS. OSR have provided feedback on each quarterly publication and that feedback has been reflected in this latest update.

This update focuses on our survey and economic statistics improvements, with updates on population and migration statistics covered in the Quarterly update on population and migration statistics, with the next release expected in August.

Statistical Business Register

The Statistical Business Register (SBR) remains a strategically important and technically complex pillar of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio. The SBR will replace the current Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), managing a comprehensive UK business database, serving as the cornerstone for economic statistics and other Government users. The SBR will allow us to expand our use of alternate data sources to improve data quality and enhance user efficiency.

Since April, the focus has been on strengthening delivery confidence through a period of replanning. The business planning process has reaffirmed SBR as an organisational priority, with resource and funding aligned to support delivery of key milestones over the Spending Review period. A senior group of accountable stakeholders has agreed a phased approach intended to deliver early value while protecting the quality of statistics and reducing transition risk.

In the year ahead, delivery will focus on the next phase of advanced search and view capability, critical integration with other ONS systems, assurance checkpoints and increased use of the SBR for sampling on a controlled, risk-managed basis. This phased adoption path is designed to isolate changes so they can be quality assured and stress tested before full adoption of the new system. The overall aim is to build confidence in the new register, improve the quality and trustworthiness of business survey statistics, and lay stronger foundations for wider change across the business survey portfolio, including the implementation of new statistical classifications. We have already delivered some significant progress, deploying advanced search and view to users, with a permanent switch for research users taking place from October 2026. We have used new data sources (Corporation Tax) to improve the sampling for the financial services survey and the SBR has already been used to sample a small number of other business surveys.

Challenges remain. The transition from legacy systems is highly dependent on sequencing, testing, system integration and the practicalities of operating new and existing registers in parallel. However, this quarter has produced greater clarity on the route to early value and a more realistic basis for delivery planning.

Labour market statistics

In August 2026, we will provide a detailed progress update on Labour Market Statistics Transformation, as part of our regular series of articles. As set out in the previous update, the July readiness assessment remains an important milestone and will be the focus of the upcoming article. It will inform the next stage of decisions on transition from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). Early operational data on the TLFS shows an improvement in the response rates for Waves 2 and 5 of the survey, following the introduction of data rotation in April, that is in line with our targets. Planning continues to indicate that the most likely transition window for headline labour market statistics is in 2027, with timing remaining data led.

Alongside the TLFS programme, wider labour market statistics development continues. This includes maintaining and strengthening the LFS, including:

• reweighting work with initial results expected later in 2026

• maximising the value of administrative data

• progressing the Linked Employer–Employee Dataset

• developing labour accounts in line with new international frameworks

• continuing to improve systems supporting outputs such as Average Weekly Earnings

The ONS is also continuing to work with users on the implications of recent changes to the Annual Population Survey boost sample for local and regional data needs, while engagement through technical and stakeholder groups continues as evidence on quality, readiness and transition implications develops.

International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards

The package of work to transition our economic statistics to international standards – the International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) programme – is an organisational priority, recognised through our resource planning for the period ahead.

The immediate focus will be implementing the classifications that matter most for gross domestic product (GDP), and the current account, with priority activity centred on implementation of the following:

• Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2026)

• Classification of Products by Activity (CPA 2026)

• Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP 2018)

• Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX)

In parallel, work is progressing on the following recommendations:

• System of National Accounts (SNA 2025)

• Balance of Payments Manual (BPM7)

These have been assessed as essential in the near term, particularly where they have a direct effect on headline economic measures, for example, GDP and Net Domestic Product (NDP).

Over the past quarter we have finalised and published UK SIC 2026 following extensive consultation with businesses, trade bodies, government and academia. The supporting indexes and main volume remain on track for publication by July 2026. The mapping between SIC 2007 and SIC 2026 is currently underway and is expected to be finalised by the end of the year to support transition. Once available, we will determine the optimal timing for implementing the mapping alongside other delivery priorities – this represents a key foundational step towards enabling survey sampling on a SIC 2026 basis. In parallel, a period of system discovery is underway to identify the development required to update relevant systems to operate on a SIC 2026 basis; this development is expected to span several years as part of the wider implementation programme.

Work has also begun on CPA 2026, with publication of the final classification expected by December 2026. For COICOP 2018, implementation is progressing through key surveys, with the Living Costs and Food Survey on track for despatch in July 2026 and the Integrated Annual Business Survey in March 2027, alongside wider methodological development work to integrate non-survey data sources.

Progress is being made to reduce reliance on legacy dissemination approaches. For economic statistics, work is underway to explore how wider adoption of SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) standards could support improvements to dissemination of statistics. SDMX is already used by the ONS for some international data transmissions and has the potential to provide more consistent, structured data and metadata across outputs. Over time, this will support better machine-readable dissemination, including improved application programming interface (API) access and stronger foundations for future analytical and AI-enabled tools. For example, it lays a foundation to make use of open-source tools tailored to statistical data, such as StatGPT, where natural language questions can be translated into structured SDMX queries.

As with other major cross-cutting change, the main challenge is not only the scale of technical and methodological work, but also the need to manage uncertainty, sequence delivery carefully and remain aligned with international implementation plans. A substantial programme of discovery activity is under way during 2026 to inform key design decisions, including the scale and complexity of system changes required across our legacy estate. While known dependencies remain significant, particularly on the Statistical Business Register and wider business survey transformation, there are also likely to be additional, unknown dependencies, which the discovery activity will help to understand. Some lower-priority classifications and recommendations have been deferred in the near term, but overall, the position is stronger than in April: governance is clearer, priorities are more explicit, and the programme is better placed to support internationally comparable and trusted economic statistics over the longer term.

Further, more specific updates on IMSS delivery are captured within the relevant sections of this report, reflecting progress across individual work areas.

Social surveys

Social surveys remain central to the wider survey's portfolio, with activity this quarter focused on improving quality, operational resilience and the longer-term sustainability of core survey collection.

A refreshed Social Survey Strategy is in development to set the longer-term direction for social surveys across the ONS and to help finalise the recovery roadmap. A major area of current work is exploration around the feasibility of social survey mandation. The project is looking at governance and stakeholder engagement with eight workstreams exploring the options and implications for end-to-end survey design, the potential benefits and drawbacks, and the supporting evidence base. This work will inform future decisions on whether mandation could play a role in strengthening survey data quality and supporting the longer-term sustainability of key surveys. The outcomes of this work will be reported to the ONS Executive in early 2027.

In the short to medium term, we are focusing on the recovery of household financial surveys and statistics. The scope of this activity is unavoidably constrained during the period where we are double-running two labour force surveys. Work includes:

• prioritising processing improvements through the introduction of new streamlined pipelines

• questionnaire optimisation for the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) and Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS)

• progressing digitisation of the LCF diary, including the planned implementation of a Receipt Assist Tool to automatically scan receipts by the end of this financial year

While recovery actions will continue across the next two financial years, the third year will shift towards developing and scoping a future Household Financial Statistics (HFS) strategy and plan. This approach ensures that recovery is stabilised first, before moving into a more transformative phase, which will build on earlier HFS Transformation programme ambitions, such as exploring an integrated survey and expanding the use of online collection modes.

There has also been continued focus on field operations, systems and workforce resilience. Aside from a recent operational incident, response quality across core social surveys has improved over the last year, with the LFS response levels now very similar to the levels achieved in 2019 (the period prior to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic). Our focus has now moved to sample boosts for the Living Costs and Food Survey and for the Wealth and Assets Survey later this year. Interviewer capacity remains an important dependency. The face-to-face field community is currently at 832 interviewers, which is below the required minimum of 875. Work over the last six months is reducing interviewer turnover, including an upgraded lone-worker device that supports improvements to interviewer safety. With large interview intakes over the next three months, the minimum levels will be reached by October. Alongside this, systems and technology improvements this year include new artificial intelligence approaches to receipt scanning for the Living Costs and Food Survey and upgrades to legacy Blaise data capture and management information systems. Together, these developments strengthen the foundations for more stable social survey delivery while building capability for future improvement.

In May 2026, an operational issue affected the allocation of telephone interviewer resource during the collection of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data. A systems error led to an over-allocation of interviewers from the LFS to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), reducing LFS response rates between 3 May and 10 June, with some residual impacts continuing until 17 June. The issue has now been resolved, and to prevent recurrence, we have strengthened daily monitoring, reprioritised resource allocation, and adjusted shift patterns and work allocation processes. We have also commissioned an operational “lesson learned” exercise, with findings due on 27 July, and will publish an assessment of the impact on Labour Market Statistics alongside the next Labour Market release on 21 July.

Business surveys

Business surveys remain a significant part of the wider surveys and economic statistics portfolio, and the 2026 to 2029 business-planning process has confirmed continued delivery over the full Spending Review period. In addition to the Statistical Business Register (SBR), the Business Surveys Transformation Programme will continue to focus on the Integrated Annual Business Survey (IABS) and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) transformation, as well as supporting the continual development of our strategic technology capability alongside Digital Services for both our online collection platform and data-processing systems. This quarter, the main change has been greater clarity on sequencing and scope. Through a review of the delivery model, scope and governance, we have strengthened our delivery confidence on the SBR project, with delivery plans now focused on a lower-risk path to early value.

We have progressed over the last quarter in reducing operational cost and risk through successfully moving the remaining ASHE sample to digital-to-default collection. This marks a significant achievement, with early evidence of cost savings and faster returns than in the equivalent period last year.

Strong engagement continues with those businesses within the Account Management Unit (AMU) and the Large Cases Unit (LCU), increasing our ability to manage around 600 key business respondents and improve survey response at scale. Alongside this, we have strengthened our non‑response and enforcement approach by putting structured, targeted support ahead of formal action – using account management to engage early with businesses, resolve issues, and improve compliance, with enforcement clearly positioned as a last resort where all reasonable support and engagement have been exhausted.

Our investment in improved management information and dashboards is enabling more data-driven decision-making on surveys with demanding turnaround requirements, giving teams greater operational flexibility and earlier warning of upcoming delivery risks.

Discovery work is underway to define the requirements needed to support the transition of IABS and ASHE to the Statistical Processing Platform (SPP). As large, complex surveys, they will help identify self-service capabilities that meet real delivery needs and can be reused more widely. Self-service will move routine activity closer to business areas, increasing autonomy and reducing reliance on constrained digital resources. The work is also improving understanding of end-to-end processes, helping to simplify design, improve quality and increase efficiency. For IABS, as a multi-year project, building more reusable capability should support faster, more flexible change and make the survey more sustainable and easier to adapt. More broadly, this approach will also support earlier decommissioning of parts of the legacy estate across business surveys and contribute to a more resilient portfolio. Findings are expected in July and will inform delivery confidence, prioritisation and next steps.

For IABS, which is a key dependency for the delivery of International Macro-Economic Statistical Standards (IMSS), work over the next quarter will provide greater clarity on sequencing and scope for the change activity and a phased implementation plan. Successful delivery of IABS, and the associated ASHE transformation, will depend on careful sequencing across the wider ONS change portfolio and resource capacity.

Prices

Prices statistics remain a core part of the wider economic statistics portfolio. Progress this quarter has focused on strengthening quality, reducing operational risk, and modernising the systems and methods used to produce important outputs. The ONS continues to prioritise the delivery of trusted consumer, business, house price, and rents statistics, while also improving the data sources and production processes that support them.

Groceries scanner data have now been incorporated into consumer price statistics. We will continue work on automating more of the consumer prices production process, which will further reduce reliance on legacy systems, and reviewing methods for some of the more complex items in the Consumer Prices Index basket.

There has also been important progress in house prices and rent statistics. The UK House Price Index has been migrated to a strategic system, improving resilience, quality and efficiency. The Price Index of Private Rents changed from official statistics in development to official statistics status in May 2026, reflecting increased maturity and positive feedback from users and stakeholders.

Looking ahead, priorities for the year also include:

• a comprehensive review of the UK House Price Index methodology

• further improvements to Household Cost Indices, as work continues towards future accreditation

• preparatory work for the next COICOP framework

• improvements to deflators used across the National Accounts

Some areas will move more slowly than previously hoped, including the onboarding of additional scanner data retailers and the broader end-to-end transformation of business prices, where the near-term focus will instead be on improving sampling methods and addressing issues raised through external review.

National Accounts

The National Accounts and GDP theme continues to cover a wide range of activity, with progress this quarter focused on strengthening quality, improving coherence and supporting longer-term transformation. A notable achievement this quarter was the successful delivery of the Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus project, which marked a noteworthy step in aligning UK National Accounts and financial statistics with the highest international reporting standards. This enhances the transparency, consistency and accessibility of important macroeconomic datasets – particularly across the financial sector – through strengthened collaboration with the Bank of England. It represents a step change in the UK’s ability to meet global data requirements, improve international comparability, and support decision-making by providing more comprehensive and timely financial statistics.

Alongside this, the ONS has published a further update on progress and broader plans for developing financial sector data. Work with the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence has contributed to a deeper understanding of how GDP balancing is approached internationally, highlighting differences in how countries reconcile production, income and expenditure estimates. This research has strengthened insight into alternative balancing frameworks, including the use of statistical discrepancy, supply-use balancing techniques, and institutional processes, and has helped inform UK thinking on improving coherence, transparency and robustness in GDP compilation over the longer term.

There has also been further transparency on methodology, including how residual seasonality in GDP is assessed and monitored. As a result of our user engagement, there has been a recognition that observed patterns reflect both genuine economic phenomena and methodological challenges, rather than straightforward quality concerns. This has been supported by the publication of our How we adjust GDP to remove seasonal effects blog and our How the ONS assesses statistical outputs for residual seasonality methodology, which set out the evidence and methods in a clear and transparent way. The ONS has addressed residual seasonality through a combination of enhanced diagnostics, methodological refinements, and clearer communication of uncertainty and limitations, ensuring that stakeholders are better equipped to interpret the data. Alongside this, there has been an increased and sustained focus within our production processing both on monitoring, and, where possible, mitigating these effects.

At the same time, longer-term transformation work continues across several important strands. Migration of the Financial Accounts, Dividend and Interest Matrix, and Balance of Payments calculation processes onto strategic systems is under way, alongside implementation of classification changes, such as COICOP 2018, which affect Household Final Consumption Expenditure processing. Work is also progressing to reinstate a quarterly estimate of Regional GDP, to strengthen financial sector data integration, and to make greater use of administrative data, such as Value Added Tax (VAT) and Real Time Information.

We are also commissioning the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) to review how evolving working arrangements, including umbrella companies and remote or hybrid working, should best be reflected in our more granular output and employment estimates by sector and geography. We have asked them to recommend any practical improvements that could help address the measurement challenges these approaches present across relevant economic statistics.

In parallel, development of experimental Data as an Asset estimates continues, with the ambition of publishing experimental estimates by the end of 2026 and continuing to make progress on developing a measure of the depletion of natural resources. Taken together, these changes are intended to improve the quality, coherence, timeliness, and resilience of GDP and wider National Accounts outputs, while building capability for future enhancement.

Public sector

Public sector statistics have seen important progress this quarter, with a focus on improving quality, strengthening production capability and supporting greater confidence in our main outputs. Since April, the ONS has reintroduced the annual publication of country and regional public sector finances, restoring an important set of statistics on public sector revenue, expenditure and net fiscal balance at country and regional level. Alongside this, a proof-of-concept cloud-based solution has been delivered for the ingest and data processing of source data used in public sector outputs. This creates a stronger foundation for future improvements in both statistical quality and operational efficiency.

The next phase of work will focus on turning this early technical progress into more sustainable improvement across the public sector finance production system. Priorities for 2026 to 2027 include:

• meeting the requirements arising from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) review of the economic statistics classification process

• improving the quality of public sector finances through updated funded pensions estimates

• working with suppliers and users to strengthen areas including tax receipts, local government expenditure and Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities

We have set out more details about forthcoming methodological work and classification reviews that may affect the public sector finance statistics in our Looking ahead – developments in public sector finance statistics: 2026 article.

By March 2027, the intention is to build the cloud-based ingest and processing solution into a production-ready system. Taken together, these developments support the broader aim of modernising methods and systems in a way that improves quality, delivers efficiencies and helps prepare for implementation of the International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards.

Trade and Balance of Payments

Trade, Foreign direct investment and balance of payments activity remains a substantial part of the wider economic statistics portfolio, with core development work retained through the 2026 to 2029 business planning process. Priority activity continues on reducing reliance on legacy systems across trade in services, trade in goods, foreign direct investment, mergers and acquisitions, and balance of payments. Methodological improvement work is also continuing, particularly for our International Trade in Services Survey and Foreign Direct Investment Survey. Recent progress includes the publication of a new user guide to international trade statistics and trade asymmetries, alongside continued work to meet the requirements set by the OSR to support future reaccreditation. We will be publishing a trade development update in the autumn, outlining our progress in meeting the OSR’s requirements.

We are moving forward with plans to restart the Digital Economy Survey, starting with cognitive testing and a pilot data collection. This will support Balance of Payments Manual Version 7 implementation and improve measurement of the impact of artificial intelligence on the UK economy.

At the same time, delivery confidence is affected by several dependencies and resource pressures. Recruitment delays in the International Trade in Services and Balance of payments teams mean that some milestones are now expected to move beyond their original March 2027 timetable. Some elements have also been deferred, including the addition of globalisation questions to the first transition of the Integrated Annual Business Survey, the timetable for a more rationalised trade collection approach, and delivery of the Statistical Business Register for Foreign Direct Investment Survey sampling.

The ONS is currently awaiting the outcome of an internal statistics review by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), who are an important data supplier for our trade in goods statistics. The purpose of this review is to identify and address the risk of errors in HMRC’s official statistics, particularly those that feed into market-sensitive official statistics produced by the ONS.

Overall, the position is one of continued progress, but with a clearer recognition that delivery will need to be carefully sequenced and, in some cases, slowed, to reflect capacity and dependencies more realistically.

Legacy systems and resilience

Reducing reliance on legacy systems remains a consistent theme across the portfolio. Ageing technology continues to create operational risk, constrain flexibility and make it harder to improve quality at pace. The scale and complexity of the legacy challenge means this will be a longer-term area of focus. The July position is therefore one of sharper prioritisation, focusing first on the legacy reductions that matter most to the resilience of critical outputs while being more realistic about the dependencies and capacity required to deliver them safely.

This has practical consequences for the year ahead. In some areas, progress will come through modernisation of specific production systems; in others, progress will come through tighter quality assurance, re-sequencing of change, or transitional approaches that reduce fragility while longer-term replacements are developed. The main principle is that legacy reduction must serve statistical quality and operational resilience, not simply technology change for its own sake. Our drive for process excellence is supporting this shift by standardising analytical tools and skills in areas such as foreign direct investment processing, where early evidence points to more proactive, efficient and autonomous ways of working.

Improving statistical quality

We have begun a more systematic programme of end-to-end quality reviews of our outputs, which is aligned to the Generic Statistical Business Process Model. This responds directly to external feedback and requirements from the OSR, and is intended to improve transparency on how quality is being strengthened across statistical production. The first review under this approach of our Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK bulletin is now under way, with further reviews planned over the second half of the year. Over time, the intention is that insights from these reviews will inform prioritisation and provide a clearer account of where improvements are delivering the greatest value for users.

We are leading a piece of work across the Government Statistical Service (GSS) to improve collaboration between government data suppliers and official statistics producers. In particular, this work aims to strengthen the end-to-end data supply chain, improve data quality and consistency, and reduce risks to the production of official statistics where administrative data are an input. Collaborative workshops have been held with attendees across government to identify potential actions; they identified several important themes, including:

• capability building across the GSS

• mapping the full end-to-end data journey across critical data sources, and understanding the risks

• change management across operational systems and impacts

• improving metadata standards and consistency

The next steps are to agree these actions, and relevant owners, through the appropriate GSS governance.

Key performance indicators and evaluation

A central development since April has been the move towards a stronger performance framework for the Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio. Earlier updates relied mainly on milestones and narrative reporting. These remain important, but they do not on their own show whether activity is improving the quality, resilience and trustworthiness of the statistics that matter most. 

We are therefore developing a more strategic set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to support decisions, show whether risks are reducing, and provide clearer evidence to assess whether improvements are working. 

The initial set of KPIs is intended to give a balanced view across the main SES outcomes that are focused on improving quality and trustworthiness, timeliness and relevance, and our capability and infrastructure for better economic statistics. Several of these indicators are already established or previously published, while others will continue to rely on supporting narrative until measurement is more mature. The KPIs presented here provide an early but practical basis for tracking whether the portfolio is improving the quality of inputs, reducing avoidable risk and strengthening the capability for sustained delivery of high-quality economic statistics.  

This work is useful for supporting the evaluation and, in turn, evaluation will support improvements by helping us understand which interventions are having the greatest effect and how lessons from delivery should shape future choices. 

In this publication, the performance framework is still at an early stage and will continue to mature. That means some measures will initially be partial and will need to be refined over time, but the direction of travel is clear: from specific milestone reporting towards a more robust, evidence-led account of whether the portfolio is improving outcomes for users.

The below infographic shows the current set of KPIs. Further information on each measure can be found in Annex A.

The waiting room builds on prioritisation decisions the ONS has already taken to protect delivery of our most critical statistics. The ONS has narrowed our portfolio and reduced, paused or stopped a range of activity to release capacity for quality, resilience and recovery. This includes:

• closing the Integrated Data Service Programme

• reducing ONS involvement in some health surveys

• pausing quarterly greenhouse gas emissions statistics

• stopping development of subnational tourism estimates

• scaling back well-being statistics

• narrowing some international and externally funded analytical work

These are difficult choices, but they reflect the principle of putting quality before quantity.

For the Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio, the same principle applies. Capacity is being focused on stabilising and improving main outputs, strengthening survey recovery, reducing operational risk, and supporting major priorities, such as the Transformed Labour Force Survey, the Statistical Business Register, International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS), and critical system modernisation.

The waiting room provides transparency over the work that remains valuable but cannot all proceed now. It shows where transformation or development activity is being delayed or sequenced so that current delivery commitments remain credible and achievable.

In practice, this means some work that remains important will not move immediately into active delivery. This includes activity where scope needs further development, important dependencies have not yet been resolved, or the required skills and capacity cannot yet be made available without undermining higher-value commitments. The waiting room is therefore not a statement that work lacks value. It is a way of sequencing change more realistically and protecting delivery confidence in the areas that matter most now.

At the time of this publication, the waiting room includes a mix of deferred, conditional or lower-readiness activity across the portfolio, which are described in the rest of this subsection.

Household financial statistics (HFS) transformation is held in the waiting room. Current activity is focused on recovery actions that are needed to stabilise household financial surveys and statistics, including processing improvements, questionnaire optimisation, Living Costs and Food Survey diary digitisation, and increased use of administrative data. As a result, longer-term transformation ambitions – such as developing a future HFS strategy, exploring an integrated survey model, expanding online collection, and improving harmonisation across income, spending and wealth outputs – are being delayed until the recovery phase is more secure. This reflects a conscious sequencing choice – protecting delivery confidence now, while recognising that further transformation will still be needed in future plans.

A slower rate of expansion of the Account Management Unit and Large Cases Unit, which will now be achieved via efficiencies elsewhere across business surveys operations, as opposed to new recruitment. This will likely mean a slower rate of quality gains across our business surveys data collection. 

Further onboarding of additional scanner data retailers and the broader end-to-end transformation of business prices are also currently on hold. The near-term focus will instead be on improving sampling methods and addressing issues raised through external review. The resource that was not allocated to this work has instead been used to increase our ambition for the Household Costs Indices (HCIs), as we work towards accreditation in 2029, and undertake preparatory work for the implementation of the new Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) in 2029, in line with international guidance.

We have had to phase our legacy reduction work. In the labour market area, work on AWE and ASHE is progressing, but work on BRES is currently in the waiting room as the majority of resource needed to begin that work in earnest is being used for ASHE. In Financial Accounts work to move the FSS off SAS is also in the waiting room.  

For our suite of core economic indicators, the primary item not yet progressed was the investigation into the use of alternative data sources, such as scanner data and financial transactions data, to replace or complement retail sales survey data. While this remains a priority area, it has not been resourced at present, as efforts are focused on transforming and integrating structural annual business surveys and transitioning away from legacy technology. 

Work to further enhance our Reproducible Analytical Pipelines is also being held in the waiting room. The opportunity is to move more statistical production onto modern cloud-based, automated and auditable pipelines, using workflow orchestration and stronger data engineering approaches. This would reduce manual intervention, improve traceability from source data to published outputs, strengthen quality assurance, and create reusable approaches that could support wider statistical modernisation across the ONS. However, this work is not yet able to move into active delivery at the scale required because capacity is being prioritised towards recovery, resilience and higher-confidence commitments. The consequence is that some production areas will remain reliant on more manual or less resilient processes for longer, and the wider benefits of reusable pipeline patterns will be delayed.

Other examples include improvements to the National Accounts production process and moving mergers and acquisitions, trusts and funds, and insurance surveys to online collection.​

Keeping this work in the waiting room allows the ONS to remain transparent about ambition while focusing active delivery on the areas where plans, resources and dependencies are sufficiently mature.

Annex B provides a list of change activities, which are planned for delivery in the financial year 2026 to 2027. It also sets out which activities remain under development and require further assurance before being confirmed, and the status of activities previously communicated under the Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan (SIEP) and Economic Statistics Plan (ESP). This provides a transparent view of what is in active delivery, what is being developed further, and where previous commitments have been re-sequenced, deferred or brought into the waiting room as part of the more disciplined portfolio approach described in this update. 

The annex will be updated alongside future quarterly updates as our plans develop.

This update reflects a stronger and more disciplined approach to improving surveys and economic statistics. The portfolio is now clearer, better prioritised and more closely aligned to business planning, with a sharper focus on the improvements that matter most for users: protecting critical outputs, strengthening capability, sequencing change credibly, and improving transparency over progress.

There has also been tangible progress. The Statistical Business Register is moving onto a more controlled path to early value. The move of the remaining Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings sample to digital-first collection is reducing operational cost and risk. Accreditation under the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus strengthens the transparency and international comparability of UK financial statistics. These achievements sit alongside broader improvements in survey response, quality monitoring and portfolio governance.

Important risks remain. Delivery continues to depend on the ability to recruit the right workforce capability, the quality of data sources, progress moving off legacy systems, and the successful management of complex dependencies across major programmes and portfolios. The next phase will therefore focus on sustaining the momentum already built: maturing the KPI framework, refreshing milestones so they remain realistic and outcome-focused, and continuing to strengthen the evidence base for portfolio decisions. A critical area of focus is working to progress to the Transformed Labour Force Survey as our headline measure for labour market statistics. The ONS will continue to be constrained in its ability to improve the quality of economic statistics whilst we are double-running two labour force surveys. Future updates will provide a clearer picture not only of milestones achieved, but through our new system of key performance indicators, of the difference those actions are making to the quality, resilience and trustworthiness of the statistics that users rely on. 

Annex A: Key Performance Indicators measuring progress towards survey and economic statistics outcomes

This annex presents our initial suite of key performance indicators (KPIs) being used to measure progress towards improving the survey and economic statistics (SES) outcomes. We break down our progress by SES outcome, measure, and what each measure shows.

SES outcome: Improve the quality and trustworthiness of our economic statistics portfolio

Measure: Corrections to errors in economic statistics

What the measure shows: Recent data showing any changes to the rates and significance of corrections.

It is important that when errors are identified, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) makes every attempt to correct them as quickly as possible. Most corrections reflect errors that had lower impact in terms of changes to our statistics. There were fewer corrections in the most recent quarter than in the previous one, with 17 corrections to our economic statistics over the period March 2026 to May 2026, and 31 corrections over the period December 2025 to February 2026. Most errors are found and corrected within a month of being made. The number of corrections to economic statistics outputs fluctuates throughout the year. Since January 2026, there have been no “higher impact” corrections.  

Although errors can occur at various stages of our production processes, manual processes carry a higher risk and have been a contributing factor in several recent corrections. In response, the ONS has enhanced its validation and quality assurance controls and is strengthening associated guidance and procedures. We have also identified a small number of errors resulting from data handover issues and are working collaboratively with data providers to improve the quality and reliability of the data supplied to us.

Measure: Current Accreditation Status for Tier 1 and 2 economic statistics outputs

What the measure shows: Signals credibility and confidence in areas where accreditation status is relevant and when accreditation is obtained again following cancellation or suspension, though change may be infrequent. 

Accredited Official Statistics are official statistics that have been independently reviewed by OSR and confirmed to comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. These were previously called National Statistics. All outputs have been prioritised through a tiering system to support the ONS to focus on a smaller number of critically impactful outputs. Therefore, understanding accreditations in our highest priority Tier 1 and Tier 2 outputs will support understanding where our efforts are leading to improved quality. This measure focuses on Tier 1 and 2 regular economic statistics that are not official statistics in development. Statistics in development are excluded from this measure because their expected progression is typically to become official statistics before they can be considered for accredited official statistics status. There is not currently a target for accreditations, but we expect to develop targets as part of the next iteration of developing these KPIs. Accreditation can take years to achieve, so this metric may not move frequently, therefore it is accompanied with commentary about where we are working towards accreditation and what we have achieved.  

We are undertaking the necessary work for important outputs where accreditation is currently suspended or where reaccreditation is a priority. This includes forward planning for Producer Price Inflation and continuing development work for UK Trade including a Code of Practice self-assessment and understanding the findings of the forthcoming HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) review. We will provide an update on the approach for labour market statistics derived from the LFS (and in the future from the TLFS) when we publish the next Labour Market Transformation update, which will include the outcome of the TLFS readiness assessment, in August. Across these areas, the aim is to provide a more transparent account of what has been addressed, what remains to be done, and when future accreditation assessments may realistically take place.

In June the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) confirmed that Business enterprise research and development (BERD) statistics achieved accredited official statistics status. This follows improvements to the sample design and survey methodology, increased survey data volumes, extensive user engagement, work to develop an improved back series to 2014, and continued open engagement with OSR and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).

Measure: Social Survey Responses levels over time 

What the measure shows: Operational performance of social survey data collection for the Labour Force Survey (LFS), Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN), Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF), and Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS). These figures help demonstrate the operational performance of surveys, and can provide some limited insight of survey quality.

They cannot tell us anything about bias, or how representative the data are. They are also not a direct indicator of the quality of statistical outputs made using these data, which typically have techniques applied to further improve quality (such as imputation for missing data).

The number of interviews achieved across these four surveys show recovery against previous downward trends, with LFS performance back at pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019. Our recently published survey sample and response tracker prototype has been developed to improve transparency on the operational performance of our surveys, and will be developed further over time reflecting user feedback. The achieved interviews in LFS will dip temporarily in Quarter 2 (Apr to June); this reflects an overallocation of interviews to the TLFS, which has now been addressed.

Figure 2: Achieved individual interviews for the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN)

Great Britain, 14 May 2020 to 26 April 2026

Measure: Business Survey Response Rates over time 

What the measure shows: Operational performance of business survey data collection.

These figures help demonstrate the operational performance of surveys and can provide limited insight on survey quality. They cannot tell us anything about bias, or how representative the data are. They are also not a direct indicator of the quality of statistical outputs made using these data, which typically have techniques applied to further improve quality (such as imputation for missing data).   

At a time when survey response rates globally present challenges, we are seeing encouraging signs of improvement and stability in response to ONS business surveys. Our focus on labour market business surveys has generated strong post-pandemic recovery. For example, we expect the current Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings round to reach or exceed pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic responses. The Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey is already regularly exceeding pre-pandemic response levels by approximately 8%. We have also seen signs of recovery across other business surveys including the Annual Business Survey (ABS), the UK Manufacturers’ Sales by Product Survey (Prodcom), and the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES), further supported by our ongoing improvement plan. Our monthly business surveys show a post-pandemic increase, with stable response rates in recent years. 

Response figures for the most recent annual and monthly rounds presented will not include data from late survey returns; these are included in revised response figures in subsequent releases. Through enhanced business engagement and improved survey design, we are working to improve survey data clearance and improve the quality of our estimates for earlier deliveries. 

We will work to expand our recently published survey sample and response tracker prototype to include business surveys. This will help to improve transparency on the operational performance of our surveys, including measures of survey response and coverage for a wider range of ONS business surveys beyond the subset presented here.

Measure: Trustworthiness from the ONS Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey

What the measure shows: the ONS runs an annual stakeholder satisfaction survey. We invite all ONS users to participate and in the most recent survey we had 135 responses. This measure gives an external view and shows the results of questions around trustworthiness for users of economic statistics from the 2025 to 26 survey.

In 2025 to 2026, 88% of users of economic statistics either agreed (37%) or strongly agreed (51%) that the ONS is a trustworthy organisation and 82% of economic statistics users agreed (38%) or strongly agreed (44%) that the ONS produces statistics that are trustworthy. This remains broadly similar when compared with 2024 to 2025: there has been a very small decrease for both of these metrics, with each reducing by 1 percentage point.

SES outcome: Deliver a suite of relevant and timely economic statistics and data in line with user expectations

Measure: Delivering our economic statistics on time – changes to ONS publication calendar, including delays and postponements to published economic statistics outputs 

What the measure shows:  Shows punctuality in delivering scheduled statistics releases and proactive management of publication calendar to protect quality of our key statistics. In some cases, changes to release dates are made to ensure that publications are of the best quality possible. or to reflect other changes such as new Bank Holidays.

Since January 2026, 100% of Tier 1 economic statistics publications have been delivered on time.

There was a change in the release calendar as a new (one-off) Bank Holiday was established by Scotland for June 2026. Our Labour market overview, UK publication was then moved by two days around six months ahead of the scheduled release to reflect that. Since this change was mandatory, we consider this release delivered on time.

In 2025 we postponed two Tier 1 publications:

• our Retail sales, Great Britain: July 2025 release was postponed in August for quality reasons

• our UK trade: January 2025 release was postponed in March for quality reasons

We also cancelled the monthly Producer Price Inflation publication seven times while we addressed quality issues with our prices methods. The publication series was resumed in October 2025.

Separately, there was a change in the pre-announced scheduled date for two of our Tier 1 releases, where provisional dates were changed to ensure they aligned with the GDP theme day:

• our UK economic accounts: January to March 2025 release

• our Quarterly sector accounts, UK: January to March 2025 release

Measure: Proportion of users whose needs are fully or partially met from the ONS Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey

What the measure shows: the ONS runs an annual stakeholder satisfaction survey. We invite all ONS users to participate and in the most recent survey we had 135 responses. This measure gives an external view and shows the results of questions around meeting user needs for users of economic statistics from the 2025 to 2026 survey.

At the ONS level in 2025/2026, 86% percent of respondents said that ONS statistics fully or partially meet their needs. This is a decrease from when it was 92% of users in 2024/2025. The proportion reporting that their needs were fully met increased from 36% to 42%, while the proportion reporting their needs were only partially met fell from 56% to 44%. While the overall proportion whose needs were met decreased slightly, the balance shifted towards users feeling their needs were being met more completely, indicating an improvement in the quality of users' experience.

The charts below show the breakdown by each theme of economic statistics a year-on-year comparison of user needs being fully, partially or not met. All the themes except Public Sector Finance have seen increases in user needs being fully met and this trend is particularly strong for the Labour Market and Prices, Inflation and Cost of Living Themes. This could reflect the improvements to the quality of the labour market survey, and the work to bring scanner data into the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and to reinstate producer prices. However, there are also some themes where there have also been small increases in user needs not being met at all, particularly, global trade and investment, public sector finances, and inflation and cost of living. This could reflect the need to rebuild trust in those series following a number of significant errors across trade, public sector finances and inflation statistics in 2025.

Figure 10: Percentage of user needs met by economic statistics theme group, 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026

Measure: Relevance from the ONS Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey

What the measure shows: the ONS runs an annual stakeholder satisfaction survey. We invite all ONS users to participate and in the most recent survey we had 135 responses. This measure gives an external view and shows the results of questions around the relevance of the ONS statistics for users of economic statistics from the 2025 to 2026 survey.

In 2025 to 2026, 78% of users of economic statistics agreed (44%) or strongly agreed (34%) with the statement that “The ONS produces statistics relevant to the main issues of the day”. This has decreased slightly from 82% in 2024 to 2025. For all users of ONS statistics who responded to the survey this figure was 81% in 2025 to 2026.

SES Outcome: Develop the capabilities, processes and infrastructure to continuously deliver and improve our portfolio of economic statistics 

Measure: Full-time equivalent (FTE) fill rate and target in SES  

What it shows: This shows whether workforce capacity is sufficient to sustain delivery. It shows the current FTE alongside an affordable target FTE that was established during the ONS’s business planning.

Since June 2025, we have increased the number of colleagues working across surveys and economic statistics from 2,875 FTE (including interviewers) to 3,298 FTE in June 2026. Surveys and Economic Statistics is recruiting to meet a target of 3,735, as set during annual business planning. This increase has been supported by the movement of colleagues from the Integrated Data Service (IDS) and by dedicated internal and external recruitment. Of note within this increase, our Economic Statistics Production teams have grown by 214 FTE, our Business Surveys teams have grown by 71 FTE, and our Social Surveys teams have grown by 138 FTE. There are currently 376 face-to-face interviewers working on the Labour Force Survey (LFS), up from 145 interviewers in October 2023 when the LFS was suspended for Labour Market statistics. Recent business planning provides room to further increase resources across surveys and economic statistics this financial year to support the improvement, strengthening and quality of our economic statistics.

Measure: Staff engagement score for SES from the Civil Service People Survey 

What the measure shows: The 2025 People Survey engagement index to give a sense of culture, engagement and capability. 

The 2025 people survey results show a staff engagement index of 61% for the Surveys and Economic Statistics Group, compared with a Civil service-wide engagement score of 65%.

Measure: Staff engagement Pulse survey results for SES

What it shows: The pulse surveys are used as a more frequent temperature check on staff engagement. They tend to have a materially lower response rate and therefore are a less robust measure, but can signal direction of travel between the wider Civil Service People Surveys.

ONS ran our first Pulse Survey for 2026 in April, which showed an improvement from the 2025 People Survey. However, differences should be interpreted cautiously, given different response rates, survey context, and the absence of respondent weighting.  

The Employee Engagement Index was 63%; the 2025 People Survey reference point was 61% with a Civil Service benchmark of 65%.