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

This fourth quarterly update reports progress on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) improvement plans for surveys and economic statistics. Since our July 2026 update, we have continued to focus resources on the improvements expected to have the greatest impact on the quality, resilience and relevance of our statistics.

There has been important progress across several priority areas.

In labour market statistics, the performance of the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) has continued to improve following changes introduced in April, with higher response rates and fewer partial returns as the changes have taken effect across more survey waves. The first readiness assessment has clarified the work needed to support a data-led transition in 2027.

The Statistical Business Register (SBR) remains on track to deliver its first transition state by the end of 2026. This will move around between 20 and 25% of current Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) users onto the new service, improving their ability to query data in the register, reducing reliance on legacy systems and providing a platform to display statistics and samples using new Standardised Industry Codes.

The social surveys field workforce has increased to 880 interviewers, meeting the target for the first time since the implementation of this improvement plan, and supporting recovery across household surveys. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings recorded its largest achieved sample to date following the move to digital-by-default collection.

Improved methods for statistical production are generating new insights into the economy:

• the incorporation of the Annual Survey of Goods and Services into the National Accounts reveals a larger service sector, with more secondary production of goods
• a new component-based approach to productivity shows a reaccounting of the slowdown in growth in output per worker after the financial crisis, with a larger role for a fall in average hours worked per worker and smaller role for a slowdown in output per hour
• new exploratory research reweighting the Labour Force Survey (LFS) using linked HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) payroll data to overcome potential employment-related non-response bias suggested a stronger recovery in employment after the pandemic and a smaller and less protracted rise in inactivity; the same research suggests the recovery in the LFS across 2024 and 2025 reduced non-response bias, with reweighting having only a small impact on LFS employment and inactivity estimates in 2025

We have improved the relevance of statistics to the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the economy, with:

• an improved measure of investment in digital infrastructure showing strong annual investment across 2024 and 2025, similar to the level last seen in 2000, alongside the “dot-com” boom
• a first article on an AI thematic account with analysis of over 5,800 UK companies specialising in AI identifying that the most common activities were AI-enhanced analytics and forecasting, consultancy on AI adoption and digital transformation, and AI-enhanced workflow and business process automation
• evolving questions in our latest Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) finding that 3 in 10 businesses use AI in their work, with the most affected roles being administration or clerical roles, creative or design roles and data analysis roles; only 6% of those using AI reported reduced headcount as a result

We have continued to modernise our systems across earnings, prices, public sector finances, trade and business surveys, alongside preparation to implement updated International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS). Reducing reliance on legacy systems remains a multi-year challenge and activity continues to focus on the systems and services most critical to statistical quality and operational resilience.

The latest performance indicators show progress in a number of areas. All Tier 1 economic statistics publications have been delivered to schedule, accreditation levels have remained stable at 71%, and there have been no higher-impact corrections since January 2026. The six-month rolling correction rate has continued to fall and is down by almost half relative to the rate at the start of the year. Our work to strengthen organisational culture has increased the surveys and economic statistics (SES) Employee Engagement Index to 65% this quarter. Survey performance remains broadly resilient. The LFS operational issue in May affected achieved interviews during Quarter 2 (Apr to Jun), but operational performance has since stabilised and recovered to levels seen for the equivalent period last year. Actions from the lessons learned review are being implemented to strengthen our survey operations. Business surveys are at historic highs following moves to digital collection.

Significant challenges remain. Specialist resource constraints have affected delivery timelines in some areas, including system discovery for international classifications, development of the Integrated Annual Business Survey and trade in goods processing systems. Teams have overcome a number of operational challenges recently relating to unexpected systems downtime and late third-party supply of data. Despite this, statistics were published on time and we are using the experience to strengthen controls and reduce extant risks. The need to manage cost pressures in future years – exacerbated by the need to continue the LFS and TLFS parallel run into 2027 – has resulted in us scaling back recruitment plans for the coming six months. We are launching new productivity and savings initiatives, including wider deployment of AI applications, that will help to absorb some of these pressures. To protect delivery confidence in priority areas of our improvement plan, we will look carefully in the coming business planning round at the sequencing of wider improvement work and our response to emerging new user needs.

Over the next quarter, our priority areas of improvement due to complete include:

• on labour market, publishing in October Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data from the largest achieved sample in the survey’s history, strengthening the quality and granularity of earnings statistics
• continuing to assess the impact of recent improvements to the TLFS and building the evidence needed for our next progress check in January 2027; in November 2026, we will publish a fuller update on preparations for transition to the TLFS, as well as new insights on UK labour market dynamism through the first linked employer-employee dataset (LEED)
• moving 150 users in December onto the new Statistical Business Register, which is a key milestone in reducing reliance on legacy systems
• publishing the Blue Book and Pink Book in October, incorporating methodological improvements to provide a more complete picture of economic activity and new analysis on the properties and drivers of historic revisions to GDP
• exploring how we can further assist users to interpret movements in Tier 1 economic statistics, by developing a smoothed seasonally adjusted measure of monthly GDP and seasonally adjusted consumer prices monthly inflation statistics; within the consumer price basket, we have identified airfares and telecommunications services as area for improvement and will provide an update in early 2027 on our plans here
• on international statistical standards, publishing in December initial estimates of “data as an asset” as a percentage of key economic measures, including GDP, and the UK Classification of Products by Activity 2026 (CPA26)
• developing a new Digital and Data Strategy that will help define the optimal sequence for moving our survey operations and economic statistics production on to modern platforms; we will provide a further update on plans and priorities for modernising statistical production systems in our January 2027 update

We will continue to prioritise the activity expected to have the greatest benefit for users, recognising that not all improvement activity can be progressed at the same time.

This is the fourth quarterly update on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) surveys and economic statistics improvement plan. It builds on the approach set out in July 2026, when we introduced a more focused, managed portfolio, underpinned by clearer prioritisation, stronger performance management and greater transparency about delivery choices.

Over the last quarter, we have continued to strengthen our approach. We have maintained a disciplined focus on the activity that is most important to the quality, resilience and trustworthiness of our statistics, as set out in our milestones (Excel spreadsheet, 44KB). This reflects our ongoing commitment to prioritisation and realistic planning, ensuring that resources are directed toward the areas where they can deliver the greatest impact for users. Our surveys and economic statistics (SES) priorities are set out below and align with the ONS’s strategic outcomes:

• improving the quality and trustworthiness of our Surveys and Economic 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

This update is set against a constrained delivery context. While we will still seek to increase the field force from the current level to support survey recovery, the affordability pressures exacerbated by the cost of continuing to dual run the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) into 2027 means we have reduced our overall target for recruitment in the financial year 2026 to 2027. This is an unavoidable consequence of dual-running the surveys for longer and will limit capacity for broader survey and economic statistics improvements in 2027. We are launching new productivity and savings initiatives, including wider deployment of AI, which will help to absorb some of these pressures. However, to protect delivery confidence in priority areas of improvement, we will need to carefully sequence wider improvement work and our response to emerging user demands. We will work through how to balance these competing demands in the coming business planning round. 

While significant challenges remain and improvements are a long-term endeavour, the progress outlined in this update demonstrates the benefits of a more focused and managed portfolio. We continue to monitor delivery against our published milestones. We have not republished the milestone assessment in this update and plan to provide a refreshed position in January 2027.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee's (PACAC) recent review of the work of the UK Statistics Authority acknowledged the progress that is being made in ONS recovery activity and highlighted the importance of continued scrutiny of the transition to the TLFS, alongside a sustained focus on openness and statistical quality. These themes remain central to the SES improvement plan and reinforce the need to maintain focus on delivering high-quality, trusted statistics while managing significant transformation and recovery activity. The board of The Authority will now consider all the findings and recommendations from PACAC carefully before responding to the report in full.

Providing quarterly updates is part of the ONS’s response following the Devereux Review and the Office for Statistics Regulation’s (OSR’s) Systemic Review of Economic Statistics produced by the ONS. The OSR response to our July SES improvement plan welcomed the clearer and more disciplined approach to managing the SES portfolio. In light of the progress made by the ONS, the OSR will move from a quarterly to an annual assessment, whilst maintaining the requirement on the ONS to continue reporting quarterly.

As part of our response to the OSR, we are publishing an initial high-level view of the costs of delivering our suite of price statistics. There are complexities in dividing up costs of statistics production, given some data sources are used in many statistics and some statistical outputs feed other statistical outputs. For example, price statistics are a required input to gross domestic product (GDP) volume measures. While these estimates are an important step towards greater transparency, they are purely indicative at this stage and will be refined as we learn more about what our users would find most useful.

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 due to be published on 16 November.

We continue to prioritise activity that will have the greatest impact for users. The following sections summarise progress since the July update, ongoing challenges and next steps across these main priority areas.

Labour market statistics

The first Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) readiness assessment in July 2026, conducted with our main users, provided a clear, evidence-led stocktake of progress, and resulted in a published forward plan needed to support a safe transition in 2027, which remains the most likely path. For the remainder of this year, our focus is on monitoring the effect of survey improvements, maturing priority datasets for transition, improving industry data quality and progressing analysis on household, socioeconomic and local (HSL) data, leading us to a critical progress check in January 2027, where we will prepare a detailed transition plan that we will publish in the first quarter of the year.

The timing of transition to the TLFS remains a data-led decision that is being balanced with the cost of continuing the dual run with the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is increasingly constraining data quality, resources and limiting the Office for National Statistics’s (ONS's) ability to invest in wider statistics improvements. Given the complexities and resources required, neither the LFS nor the TLFS will reach their quality potential while we are running the two surveys in parallel. Our approach is therefore to get the TLFS data quality to an acceptable level for us and our main users to have confidence in turning off the LFS and Annual Population Survey (APS). This will then allow the quality of the TLFS to improve further after transition, when additional resource will be available.

The performance of the TLFS has continued to improve with higher return rates, fewer partial returns and shorter completion times, as the effects of the introduction of data rotation between survey waves and higher incentives in April feed through. Early indications suggest that performance has strengthened further from July, with a Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2026 return rate of 40.5% for Wave 1 Core, compared to 37.1% for Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2026 and 39.9% for Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2026. Improvements have also been seen for the TLFS longitudinal return rates – 37.7% for Waves 2 to 5 for Quarter 3 2026, a notable improvement from 27.7% in Quarter 1 2026 and 32.8% in Quarter 2 2026. The performance of the TLFS is also being supported by increases in our field force, which is described in more detail in this section. A further and more detailed update on survey performance, including return rates for the latest quarter, will be published in November, as part of the quarterly series of Labour market transformation articles.

As outlined in our previous update, an operational issue occurred in May 2026, which led to temporary under-resourcing in LFS telephone collection operations. The subsequent lessons learned review identified a number of actions to strengthen operational oversight, governance and assurance. While the incident had a minimal impact on headline labour market estimates, it identified a small but noticeable impact on estimates of average hours and, consequently, total actual hours worked. Actions taken in response to the incident have supported recovery in LFS Waves 2 to 5, with the achieved sample reaching 6,070 in the latest four-week rolling period, up from 4,961 in May, and above the equivalent periods in both 2025 (6,062) and 2019 (5,866). Details of the issue and key recovery actions and progress to date is available in Section 6: Progress following the LFS telephone operations incident.

As well as our work on TLFS, we are progressing reweighting LFS data using updated population information. This will improve the alignment of labour market estimates with the latest population statistics, and support greater coherence across outputs. The first reweighted labour market statistics have been slightly delayed but are expected to be published by March 2027.

On the 22 October, we will be publishing the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2026 in advance of the Budget to facilitate transparent decision making. This publication will benefit from a particularly successful data collection round, with around 197,000 employee records being collected and processed across the UK, compared to around 174,000 last year – this is the largest achieved sample size in ASHE history. More information on our work to drive this improvement is in the Business surveys subsection.

We are also improving the production of average weekly earnings (AWE) statistics through a programme of methodological and systems enhancements. The methods review is examining key elements of the AWE production process, including sample design, seasonal adjustment, selective editing, treatment of outliers, imputation methods, and adjustments for smaller businesses, to ensure the estimates remain robust, high quality and fit for purpose. Alongside this, the AWE processing system is being modernised by replacing legacy software with a more flexible and sustainable platform, improving resilience and making it easier to implement future methodological improvements. We expect this work to be completed by March 2027. Together, these changes will strengthen the quality, transparency and adaptability of one of the UK’s most widely used measures of earnings growth.

Initial findings from research to understand whether linking HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) data to the LFS can help identify and address employment-related non-response bias were published in our Investigating non-response to the LFS using administrative data methodology in September 2026. The analysis suggests patterns in apparent under- and over-representation of PAYE employees in the LFS respondent sample have varied over time. Extending the current LFS survey weights to include PAYE information increases the estimated employment rate in 2019; decreases it from mid-2020 to the end of 2021; increases it from mid-2022 to mid-2024; and has little impact in 2025. The impact of the reweighting on estimated unemployment and economic inactivity rates mirrors that for the employment rate.

We have also made further progress with developing a linked employer-employee dataset (LEED), which links workers to their employers, in which we exploit more of the potential of administrative information, specifically HMRC PAYE employment. A feature of a UK LEED is that it enables longitudinal tracking of any movement of workers between and within firms over time. We plan to publish the first set of official statistics in development on labour market flows in November 2026 from a firm and a worker perspective, which would capture new insights on UK labour market dynamism. This would include new estimates of job hires, job separations, and job-to-job flows. This will be available by firm and worker characteristics, such as age of the worker and the size and industry of the firm. These will provide new insights into how people move through the labour market, helping to improve our understanding of how the labour market is evolving.

We have also published a new component method for measuring labour productivity. This represents a significant improvement in the way labour inputs are estimated, by combining the strength of multiple data sources and international best practice, helping to provide a more robust and coherent picture of UK productivity growth. While the new approach shows a similar trend for the growth of output per worker, it changes the picture materially for output per hour worked. A continuation, after the financial crisis, of the previous trend of declining hours worked, leaves a smaller slowdown in the growth in output per hour.

To support understanding of these important changes, we held three briefing sessions on the day of the release and participated in an external panel to discuss the changes on the following day. The discussion included the UK’s long-standing “productivity puzzle”, which remains evident in the data, although the revised picture on average hours worked removes half of the slowdown in the growth rate of output per hour, leaving the UK’s experience more in line with peer comparators. Estimates up to Quarter 2 2026 will be available in November at a whole economy level. Throughout next year we will roll out improved estimates for industry level productivity, and subsequently sub-national level data.

Statistical Business Register

The Statistical Business Register (SBR) is a strategically important and technically complex pillar of the ONS and Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio. The SBR will replace the current Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), providing a comprehensive UK business database, serving as the cornerstone for economic statistics and other government users. As the primary source for business survey samples and business population information, it forms a key part of our approach to managing statistical quality and reducing quality risks across the economic statistics portfolio. The SBR will also enable greater use of alternative data sources to improve data quality and enhance user efficiency.

Since our last update, significant steps forward have been taken towards Transition State 1 (TS1) of the SBR, which is on track to deliver before the end of 2026. TS1 will move users who primarily search for and view business information in the legacy IDBR to viewing the same information in the more modern interface in the SBR. For between 20 and 25% of the IDBR user base, this will represent their full use of the register, therefore enabling a large reduction in IDBR reliance and helping to create a more sustainable and supportable service for these users.

Throughout July, a full pilot was run with a sample of ambassador users asked to explore the SBR and engage in typical search activities. In general, feedback was positive and indicated that users could more easily locate and access the information they needed, supporting more efficient operational processes. Where functionality could be improved, details have been captured and prioritised, with those of greatest impact being scheduled for delivery as part of TS1.

Over the next quarter we will work with users and technical teams to refine requirements and develop the design for the next stage of delivery. A critical part of Transition State 2 (TS2) is the development of a solution that will automate the synchronisation of data between the SBR and IDBR. This will allow TS2 to begin migration of simple and low risk surveys to the SBR, therefore establishing SBR as the primary business register service for business surveys, increasing users' confidence in the product and providing feedback for future delivery. Around 30 of approximately 70 business surveys have been identified as potentially in scope for TS2, with migration activity currently expected to begin from mid-2027.

OSR review

In August, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) undertook a compliance review of SBR against the Code of Practice for Statistics. The review found clear evidence that the ten-week reset undertaken earlier this year had been effective, with particular improvement in governance, collaboration, and credibility of the delivery plans. It also made four recommendations that the ONS has accepted and is incorporating into future delivery plans to further enhance trustworthiness, quality and value. These include sustaining the governance, leadership and collaboration established through the ten-week reset, while setting clear quality and success criteria. It also recommends communicating transparently with users about phased delivery and benefits, and actively managing dependencies with related programmes to reduce delivery risk.

In agreement with the OSR, the ONS will provide updates of progress against these recommendations as part of this series of quarterly updates for the ONS surveys and economic statistics improvement plan.

International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards

The International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards (IMSS) programme is delivering the changes needed to ensure the UK’s most important economic statistics, including gross domestic product (GDP), the national accounts and balance of payments, remain relevant, coherent, trusted and internationally comparable. Implementation will take place in phases over the next five years, reflecting the breadth of change required across classifications, data, surveys, methods, systems and statistical outputs, as well as the need to sequence these changes carefully, while continuing to produce critical economic statistics. Since the July update, we have moved from agreeing priorities towards completing key classifications and building the evidence needed for implementation.

The UK Standard Industrial Classification 2026 (SIC26) main volume, indexes and correspondence tables have now been published in our UK SIC guidance following extensive consultation. Over the next quarter, work will begin on a preliminary system build to align SIC processing across national accounts systems. An approach for mapping businesses from SIC07 to SIC26 has also been agreed and is now in progress. We are also exploring whether we can use the new Statistical Business Register in 2027 to produce an analysis of the industrial composition of UK companies using SIC26, and provide new and early insights into the economy based on those classifications. Fully migrating our entire system of surveys and economic statistics to the new classification is a complex task and our current planning assumption remains fully introducing SIC26, alongside the UK Classification of Products by Activity 2026 (CPA26), in 2031.

Good progress has also been made on CPA26. A first version of the UK classification has been produced and is undergoing internal review, with cross-Government Statistical Service review, followed by publication, planned by the end of 2026. Engagement with affected statistical areas is helping to identify the survey and production changes that will be needed to implement SIC26 and CPA26 coherently.

A major remaining uncertainty is the scale of system change required to implement the new classifications consistently across the statistical production landscape. Discovery is progressing across different platforms, but work to examine some legacy systems is taking longer than originally planned due to challenges securing and onboarding specialist resource. This work will inform future planning and resource requirements.

Implementation of the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose 2018 (COICOP18) is also progressing. The updated classification has been introduced into the Living Costs and Food Survey, and plans are in place to support its introduction through the Integrated Annual Business Survey from March 2027. Work continues on methods, back series and the flow of information between consumer prices and household final consumption expenditure, which will inform the final design and sequencing of delivery towards the current target of introducing COICOP18 into the Consumer Prices Index and the national accounts in 2029.

The ONS is also carrying out detailed assessments of the changes needed to implement the System of National Accounts 2025 (SNA25) and the Balance of Payments Manual, seventh edition (BPM7). UK-led international work to align the recommendations across the two frameworks has helped identify additional core BPM7 scope, with reviews of themes including digitalisation, globalisation and natural resources and depletion underway to identify the statistical changes required, dependencies and delivery gaps. A proportionate approach is being implemented based on economic significance of each change to the UK, while continuing to protect statistical coherence, quality and international comparability. The current aim is to implement a first phase of prioritised SNA25 and BPM7 recommendations into the national accounts and current account in 2030.

Progress continues on the wider adoption of Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) standards across economic statistics outputs, where it is not already used for dissemination to international bodies. This work also has the potential to support more consistent, structured and machine-readable data and metadata, providing opportunities for dissemination on the ONS website, including more effective interaction with large language models.

Over the next quarter, the IMSS programme will focus on progressing CPA26 to agreement, continuing SIC26 business mapping, completing priority systems discovery, resolving key COICOP18 design questions, and strengthening plans for the priority SNA25 and BPM7 changes. Delivery depends on significant coordinated changes to the Statistical Business Register, business surveys, methods, legacy and strategic systems, and statistical production processes. The availability of specialist capability and the need to sequence change safely while maintaining critical economic statistics will continue to shape implementation plans, timing and delivery confidence.

Social surveys

Social surveys remain central to the ONS evidence base. A major programme of recovery and improvement is underway, and is built around four themes:

• sustainable field operations
• a refreshed citizen relationship
• improved survey and statistical design
• technology

Together, these activities are helping to increase participation, improve data quality, strengthen operational resilience and ensure our surveys continue to meet the needs of users.

Sustainable field operations

Recruitment of face-to-face interviewers remained challenging over the quarter. However, the field community has increased from 832 interviewers last quarter to 880 at the end of September, meeting our field workforce target (875 interviewers) for the first time. We remain on track to reach 900 interviewers by the end of October 2026. This increased capacity has helped to maintain stable performance on LFS in the field, and also supported the introduction of the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) boost, and improved response in later waves of the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). The LFS recorded a modest reduction in achieved interviews during Quarter 2 2026, affected by a temporary issue within telephone operations, performance has since stabilised, and the achieved sample size is above levels seen in 2019. Since July, we have made progress implementing the lessons learned actions, strengthening operational controls and increasing telephone interviewer capacity to improve resilience across labour market survey operations. Details of the issue and key actions and progress to date are set out in Section 6: Progress following the LFS telephone operations incident.

A refreshed citizen relationship

Younger adults remain underrepresented in several ONS social surveys. ONS is developing a targeted communications campaign aimed at increasing survey participation among 18 to 34-year-olds. Using results of a co-creation workshop with this age group, we have produced some creative concepts effectively targeting young people. A pilot campaign is planned for January to March 2027. The findings will inform future strategies for increasing participation amongst this key demographic.

ONS has significantly expanded its evidence base on the feasibility of survey mandation, as a potential tool to support participation and the long-term sustainability of key surveys. Insights have been gathered from international partners, government stakeholders, ONS interviewers and the public, alongside assessments of the statistical and operational impacts. This work is being carried out in conjunction with the Cabinet Office and will be discussed at executive-level in early 2027.

Improved survey and statistical design

Work has continued to improve data collection and processing on the LCF. From April 2026, the sample increased from around 20,000 to 32,420 households across Great Britain for financial year ending (FYE) 2027, to help offset lower response rates and the cessation of the Survey on Living Conditions in 2025. In July 2026, the questionnaire and coding frame were updated to collect and code spending data using the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018. The LCF downstream processing pipeline has been upgraded with a new reproducible analytical pipeline (RAP) from 2026, improving efficiency and reducing risk of error in LCF outputs.

Technology

We continue to improve transparency using our Survey sample and response tracker, which now includes the LCF and the Wealth and Assets Survey. We plan to publish the operational targets we are using for these surveys, once they have been agreed as part of the coming business planning round.

Alongside this recovery activity, the ONS is developing a refreshed Social Survey Strategy to provide a clearer direction for the future of social surveys and inform investment decisions. Supporting this work, the Social Survey Strategic Forum brings together leaders from government, academia, industry and the third sector to address shared opportunities and challenges across the UK social survey landscape. Through collaboration and knowledge sharing, the forum is helping to strengthen participation, trust, data quality and the long-term sustainability of social surveys.

Business surveys

In addition to the SBR, the Business Surveys Transformation Programme has narrowed its focus to the Integrated Annual Business Survey (IABS) and the ASHE transformation, as well as supporting the continual development of our strategic technology capability for both our online collection platform and data-processing systems.

Progress towards the next significant delivery milestones across ASHE and IABS continue at pace. On ASHE, following the successful migration of the whole Great Britain ASHE sample to digital collection, we have reduced respondent burden and made it easier for businesses to complete. This has resulted in data being received earlier than in previous years and a historic high for the cleared response rate for the survey. Looking forward, we remain on target to transition to a new statistical preparation platform ahead of the 2027 dispatch, which will further contribute to the quality and process efficiency improvements that have been seen during 2026.

The use of ClassifAI has also reduced the manual effort required for occupation coding within ASHE, releasing approximately 224 hours of processing effort while maintaining or improving coding quality. The resulting capacity has been reinvested in quality assurance, respondent support and error management activities, helping to improve operational efficiency without compromising statistical standards. We are now exploring other surveys which would benefit from moving to ClassifAI coding.

Migration of the IABS, the underlying system for processing business and economic statistics, to a strategic platform is facing challenge, due to constraints on the availability of specialist resource. However, a contingency option has been identified which, if required, would still allow the integration of important sampling and questionnaire changes in time for the next dispatch of the Annual Business Survey (ABS) in early 2027.

Alongside these projects, the journey towards adoption and integration of strategic technology across the business surveys estate remains a high priority. In the last quarter, work completed has helped to inform the ongoing roadmap for this change. Research into the development of self-serve capabilities across both the Survey Data Collection (SDC) and Statistical Preparation Platform (SPP) has been conducted. Technical capability gaps have been identified and prioritised, with work now underway to develop the necessary solutions. Once implemented, this functionality will help platform users across operational teams undertake a level of change and configuration directly, leading to a reduced reliance on in-demand digital skills. Initial functionality to allow users to update survey forms and validations is expected to be available during 2027. A specific implementation window will be shared in future updates as this work progresses.

Prices

Progress has continued on business prices improvement work, with research into alternative sampling approaches advancing through collaboration with methodological experts. The review of business prices weighting methods was taken to the Prices Technical Advisory Panel in September, while work with the OSR has helped agree the actions needed before the business price statistics enter the reaccreditation process.

On 24 August 2026, the OSR published its Compliance review of Household Cost Indices. Household Cost Indices are published every quarter as official statistics in development, and are designed to reflect how different groups of households experience inflation. We are addressing the recommendations of the review as we work towards being ready for assessment for accredited official statistics status in 2029.

We have continued to make good progress in reducing our reliance on legacy platforms and increasing automation. Work is underway to migrate the final part of our main legacy platform to the cloud, the first stage of which is currently planned for delivery in March 2027.

Automation linking all data processing pipelines has already been implemented for rail fares and second-hand cars and is being extended to scanner and local collection data. Delivery was originally planned for October; however, testing in the live environment revealed a number of defects. While most of the functionality has been delivered, additional quality assurance and a two-month parallel run are required to ensure the solution is robust and that there are no unintended consequences when it is deployed to the live production round. This will reduce manual intervention in the production process, improving efficiency and reducing the risk of error.

Following improvements introduced earlier this year to the measurement of computer games and overnight hotel accommodation, we have continued to review the methods and data sources used for items in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) basket that are difficult to measure. Short-term improvements to airfares and telecommunications services have been identified and, subject to quality assurance, will be introduced in March 2027. We will provide further details on these improvements early in 2027.

We continue to work towards publication of a seasonally adjusted CPI and Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH). We have completed the first iteration of build work and are now focusing on testing the outputs to fully assure the quality of the data prior to publication and ensuring that the aggregation method best meets user needs.

We currently publish separate development plans for consumer, business and housing price statistics. From 2027 onwards, these will be brought together into a single consolidated development plan covering all price statistics. We aim to publish the first consolidated plan in January alongside our annual impact analysis and methodological publications.

National accounts

In August, we published detailed articles and an accessible blog on the upcoming impacts on our economic estimates as part of the annual Blue Book and Pink Book publications. The changes this year include the impact of using a new data source, the Annual Survey of Goods and Services, where we now have far more detail about what services, and in some cases manufacturing of products, are being undertaken by companies primarily operating within the services sector. This has improved our estimates for activity in the service sector, increasing its share of gross value added to 81.2% (from 80.4%) and raising the overall level of nominal GDP in the economy by 0.5% in 2024.

The Blue Book and Pink Book publications, due at the end of October, will incorporate these improvements into the UK National Accounts for the first time. Alongside the Annual Survey of Goods and Services changes, they will include a range of updated survey data, administrative data and methodological improvements designed to strengthen the quality and coherence of economic statistics.

We also published an article explaining how data centres are currently represented within economic statistics and highlighting the challenges of identifying data centre investment and output. Our Redefining investment in digital infrastructure article presented updated analysis of digital infrastructure investment using an expanded definition and more recent data and evidence on data centres, AI and government support. The analysis shows that a broader measure of digital infrastructure investment is substantially larger than estimates produced by more traditional measures. These publications have improved our understanding of investment in the economy and identified areas where economic measurement can continue to evolve. The article gives an early view into how the ONS is responding to the international conversation on infrastructure statistics, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) proposed measurement framework.

The ONS has continued to strengthen its understanding and measurement of artificial intelligence across the economy. In September, we published an article setting out the framework for a UK AI Thematic Account, and the challenges and opportunities associated with measuring AI as a rapidly emerging general-purpose technology. The framework is intended to provide greater visibility of AI-related production, investment and use within the UK economy, while supporting future methodological developments and improving our understanding the scale of AI-related activity across UK businesses. Supporting analysis of businesses producing AI goods and services suggests that much of the current UK AI activity is focused on the application and implementation of AI technologies, including data analytics, forecasting and decision-making, rather than the development of AI models themselves. The ONS has also continued to develop evidence on AI adoption through business surveys and analytical work.

We also held the latest Advisory Panel on National Accounts in September, where the ONS presented topics relating to: intangible assets under the new System of National Accounts 2025 (SNA2025); GDP seasonal adjustment; GDP production process improvement; new approaches to measuring productivity and financial intermediation services indirectly measured (FISIM); and other issues related to application of new macroeconomic statistical standards. The formal minutes will be available on the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) website.

In July, we set out an update on work underway to review the historical (pre-1997) gross fixed capital formation time series. We intend to provide a further update later this year, which will also respond to the OSR’s recent correspondence requesting that we publish our plans for completing the remaining work.

In August, we published our plan to transform environmental economy surveys and this work is ongoing.

Public sector

In September, we introduced several improvements and data updates to our public sector finance statistics. In particular, we updated estimates of public sector pension funds' liabilities using the latest valuations of pension funds from the Government Actuary's Department. Alongside the other improvements and updates, these improved the quality of our statistics, in particular public sector net financial liabilities, which is the basis for one of the UK Government’s fiscal rules.

We have also been working with our data suppliers to strengthen the data that we use. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are an important provider of tax receipts data, and in September, HMRC published their review of errors in HMRC Official Statistics affecting market-sensitive statistics. We have worked with HMRC to implement Recommendation 8.3 – align the reporting methodology of the main taxes to be consistent with accounting data on a monthly basis; this should improve consistency between statistical and accounting measures. Through the Local Government Financial Information taskforce, we have worked with HM Treasury (HMT), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to improve our joint understanding of the data, data usage and methodology behind expenditure data from local authorities – which is a key input to both our public sector finance statistics and national accounts estimates.

We are transforming our systems to move to modern sustainable technology. We have now implemented the new non-legacy central government system module for the first time as part of annual national accounts and public sector finance releases. Building on our existing plans, we are exploring how broadening the cloud-based ingest and processing solution can support a wider range of economic statistics data sources, improve efficiency and introduce additional safeguards to improve data quality.

We have also progressed meeting the requirements arising from the OSR review of the economic statistics classification process. We have appointed a chair for the Economic Statistics Classifications Technical Advisory Panel, and we are now recruiting panel members.

Trade and balance of payments

Positive progress continues to reduce reliance on legacy systems, with the International Trade in Services (ITIS) Survey system rebuild remaining on track for delivery by March 2027. We have also successfully transitioned to the redeveloped strategic system for balance of payments geography level processing. ONS is also working closely with HMRC following publication of its statistics review, including joint work to map data journeys and strengthen quality assurance processes, which will help us understand and mitigate the risks of using administrative data in official statistics.

We continue to make progress against the requirements set out by the OSR, with a further development update published on 9 October. Improvements delivered over the past year include enhanced information on revisions and uncertainty in trade in services estimates, the publication of new trade in services revisions triangles, additional analysis to help users understand international trade asymmetries, and clearer quality and methodology guidance. We have also strengthened operational resilience through improved process documentation, enhanced quality assurance arrangements and continued investment in modernising the systems used to produce UK trade statistics.

Cognitive testing of the redesigned Digital Economy Survey has now been completed and pilot data collection is due to start shortly, supporting the future measurement of digital trade and the digital economy as part of digitalisation requirements under the new international frameworks (BPM7).

One challenge has been the loss of key expertise affecting development of trade in goods processing systems. To support realistic and sustainable delivery, the milestones related to this development are being reprofiled by around three months while replacement capability is established and knowledge is rebuilt.

Subnational statistics

High-quality subnational statistics depend on the strength of the underlying data, systems and methods used across economic and labour market measurement. Local statistics are generally derived from national surveys and datasets. Our work to improve national surveys and statistics is laying an essential foundation to strengthen the quality, timeliness and resilience of subnational evidence.

The transformation of key business and household surveys will strengthen the quality and granularity of the data available for subnational insights. Through the TLFS and the IABS, as well as improvements to the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) and Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES), we are strengthening the quality, coherence and granularity of the data available on businesses, workers and economic activity across the UK. We will continue to work closely with strategic and local authorities to ensure that the TLFS (which will replace the Annual Population Survey, a critical source for local users) continues to meet their needs. In the coming year, whilst we are parallel-running the LFS and TLFS, we are constrained in our ability to improve wider surveys and statistics and need to focus tightly on getting the TLFS to an acceptable quality so the LFS can be turned off, freeing up capacity for broader work.

This work includes building a new Statistical Business Register that will increase coverage of businesses in its surveys from around 3 million businesses currently to over 5.5 million by expanding coverage of micro-businesses. This will improve the quality of statistics for areas where smaller businesses are a bigger part of the local economy. The International Macroeconomic Statistical Standards programme is modernising the data, classifications and systems that underpin economic statistics. By providing a more complete view of UK businesses and economic activity, they will improve the quality of national, regional, and local estimates, giving policymakers and local leaders a stronger evidence base to understand economic change and target interventions where they are needed most.

Alongside this, we are establishing a Local Economic Statistics Division to lead work on modernising regional economic statistics through improvements to regional accounts, progressing work to reinstate Quarterly Regional GDP (QRGDP) and improving the timeliness and quality of evidence on regional productivity. Together, these investments will enable more robust and timely regional and local estimates, support greater consistency across economic indicators, and create a stronger evidence base for understanding economic change.

We are also working with the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) to better understand the conceptual and quality challenges associated with local economic measurement, helping to strengthen both the interpretation and communication of subnational statistics for users.

Beyond these improvements, we are engaging with users across government, strategic authorities and the wider statistical system to understand emerging priorities and identify where additional insights could add the greatest value, while maintaining a clear focus on delivering our core transformation and recovery commitments.

Operational resilience

During September, all major statistical outputs were delivered to schedule, despite a number of operational challenges across production systems, external data supply and late-stage quality assurance. Platform outages affected several production areas, while the late receipt of a critical administrative data supply highlighted the importance of resilient arrangements with external partners. Teams took effective action to resolve these issues before publication, but the incidents required significant additional operational effort and reinforced the need to reduce reliance on legacy systems, strengthen business continuity and escalation arrangements, and identify quality risks earlier in the production process. As part of our regular lessons learned process, we are reviewing these events with statistical and digital teams and will use them to strengthen resilience, assurance and organisational learning across statistical production.

Improving statistical quality

We are continuing with our systematic programme of end-to-end quality reviews of our outputs, which are aligned to the Generic Statistical Business Process Model. They aim to identify important risks to quality so that improvement effort can be targeted to have the biggest impact, and they intend to improve transparency on how quality is being strengthened across statistical production. This responds directly to external feedback and requirements from the OSR. We have recently completed quality reviews of local government finances statistics, which feed into public sector finances and national accounts, and Earnings and Employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI). The reviews highlighted significant strengths, including the successful modernisation of local government processing to a more automated Python-based pipeline, improving transparency, reproducibility and auditability of the process. The review also identified further opportunities to strengthen documentation, audit trails, methodological assurance and resilience, particularly in support of ongoing transformation activity. The team are exploring AI tools for improving the system documentation and are developing learner pathways to assist in building capability in using and troubleshooting the new Python system.

For PAYE RTI, the review recognised the value of the statistics as a timely indicator of labour market trends and the strong collaboration between the ONS and HMRC. It also highlighted opportunities to strengthen governance and assurance arrangements, improve communication of uncertainty associated with the flash estimate, and enhance documentation, knowledge management and methodological review processes. The ONS are working closely with HMRC to improve the presentation of the outputs as part of the wider ONS website transformation project.

Across both reviews, common themes included improving documentation and knowledge management, strengthening quality assurance and methodological scrutiny, reducing reliance on key individuals, and ensuring users are supported with clear information about uncertainty, revisions and data limitations. The findings are being used to inform ongoing quality improvement activity across economic statistics and help embed good practice more widely across the organisation.

Improving transparency on the cost of our statistics

We are developing a more disaggregated understanding of the resources used to deliver surveys and economic statistics. In this update, we are making available initial cost estimates for the production of price statistics. This work is intended to improve transparency around the resources required to deliver one of our most high-profile areas of economic statistics, while recognising the complexities created by shared data, systems, methods and enabling services. Developing activity-based costing estimates for key statistical outputs is a significant task because much of the ONS’s production activity is shared across outputs. Surveys, administrative data, systems, methods, quality assurance, digital infrastructure and enabling services often support several statistics, while some outputs also feed directly into others. This means costs cannot be cleanly assigned to a single publication without careful judgement. Producing useful estimates therefore requires detailed mapping of production activity, clear assumptions about how shared costs are allocated, and validation across statistical, digital, methodological and corporate teams. The work is important because it will improve transparency and support future prioritisation, but the estimates should be treated as indicative while the methodology is developed and tested.

Case study: the estimated cost of producing price statistics

Our current estimate is that producing the ONS suite of price statistics costs around £13.6 million a year. The suite includes consumer price statistics, business price statistics, and housing and rental price statistics, together with the supporting work needed to collect and acquire data, develop and maintain methods, operate and develop production systems, quality assure and analyse results, and publish and explain the statistics.

The scale of this work is substantial. Each month, consumer price statistics draw on around 150,000 prices collected using traditional methods, such as sending price collectors into stores. In recent years, we have started to utilise big data alongside this traditional collection, with around 40 million prices coming from alternative data sources for items such as rail fares and used cars. Since early 2026, we have replaced around 25,000 traditionally collected monthly prices with scanner data derived from sales of more than one billion units of products, generating around 300 million price observations each month. This allows us to publish around 2,750 series each month, providing a detailed snapshot of inflation in the UK. Across Producer and Services Producer Price Indices, we collect around 14,000 prices to produce around 3,500 series, the majority of which are published monthly. Rental price statistics draw on around 500,000 price observations each month to produce approximately 350 series, while the UK House Price Index uses between 50,000 and 100,000 property transactions each month to produce approximately 400 series, ranging from UK aggregates to local authority estimates of price levels and rates of inflation.

We have chosen price statistics as the initial case study because they provide a relatively self-contained area of economic statistics production. Compared with some other key economic outputs, prices have less reliance on survey and administrative data sources that are also used extensively across multiple statistical outputs. This makes it more feasible to develop an initial estimate of the resources required, while still testing the practical challenges involved in attributing costs across shared systems, methods, data collection, quality assurance and enabling services.

The figures are a first iteration and should be treated as indicative rather than as precise full-cost estimates. They rely on allocation judgements made across business areas that often support multiple outputs and are not always directly comparable with other costing approaches. Some shared digital, corporate and enabling services cannot yet be allocated reliably to individual outputs. This includes unallocated systems support, IT equipment and licences, digital support, security, estates, human resources, finance, commercial and communications services. We will continue to validate the methodology and improve the quality and granularity of the estimates.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to assess progress against the Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio outcomes:

• improve the quality and trustworthiness of our economic statistics portfolio

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

• develop the capabilities, processes and infrastructure to continuously deliver and improve our portfolio of economic statistics

Together, the measures provide evidence of progress across the portfolio, covering statistical quality, operational performance, user experience and organisational capability.

The latest key performance indicators (KPIs) show encouraging progress across the portfolio. There have been no higher-impact corrections since January 2026. In July to September 2026, there were 19 lower-impact corrections to published statistics, compared with 20 in April to June 2026. This uses quarter-on-quarter comparisons now that a full calendar quarter of data is available. To provide a more stable view of performance and reduce the effects of month-to-month volatility, correction rates are presented using a six-month rolling rate. The rate fell from 23.7% in January 2026 to 13.3% in September 2026, showing a consistent downward trend this year.

Survey performance has remained resilient overall, with key social and business surveys recovering towards, or exceeding, pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response levels. Corrective actions, implemented following a Labour Force Survey (LFS) operational issue that resulted in fewer achieved interviews during May and June 2026, have driven a recovery in achieved interviews, and overall performance remains stronger than in 2023. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings sample has been moved fully to digital-by-default collection, reducing respondent burden and making it easier for businesses to complete. The 2026 survey achieved a sample size of 197,000, exceeding recent years and pre-pandemic levels.

All Tier 1 economic statistics publications have been delivered to schedule, with no delays required. Overall accreditation levels of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 economic statistics, not including official statistics in development, have remained stable at 71%. We continue to progress work to support re-accreditation of the priority outputs, focusing particularly on UK trade statistics and Producer Price Indices (PPI), where activity is focused on improving quality information, methodology, quality assurance and transparency around our processes.

Since our July 2026 update, we have also confirmed that whilst LFS and Annual Population Survey (APS)-derived outputs that are currently official statistics in development will move to official statistics, with the exception of regional gross disposable household income (GDHI) statistics), we will not be seeking reaccreditation. Instead, our priority is for outputs based on the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), as the online-first sustainable replacement for the LFS and APS, to achieve the standards required to become accredited official statistics and for the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to consider their accreditation at the earliest opportunity. We are in close correspondence with the OSR on reaccreditation of regional GDHI statistics and that process is set to conclude in the coming weeks. We have also been engaging with the OSR on the future accreditation of the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS). We intend to provide a further update shortly, alongside our wider plans for improving household finance statistics and the progress made to date.

Driven in a large part by the financial implication of continuing to dual run the LFS and TLFS into 2027, we have adjusted our ambition for recruitment in the financial year 2026 to 2027 to contain costs in the financial year 2027 to 2028. Whilst we are still seeking to increase the interview field force, we have decided to reduce our overall full-time equivalent (FTE) target for the current year from 3,735 to 3,535. This will reduce our capacity to make wider improvements to the quality of existing survey and economic statistics, with the impact felt primarily in the financial year 2027 to 2028. Alongside this reduced capacity, we are also needing to work through increased user demands to more rapidly progress work on building new sub-national economic statistics and new statistics on the role of AI in the economy. We will work through how to balance these competing demands with reduced delivery capacity in the coming business planning round.

There is no new data this quarter for stakeholder satisfaction measures relating to trustworthiness, user needs and relevance, or for the annual SES People Survey engagement score. The latest available results continue to provide an important baseline for assessing user perceptions of ONS statistics and organisational capability. More frequent indicators, including the SES Pulse Survey, are used alongside these annual measures to monitor changes between survey cycles. The latest SES Pulse Survey shows improving staff engagement, with the Employee Engagement Index increasing slightly further in July 2026.

In September 2026, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) asked a panel of academic macroeconomists about their confidence in ONS statistics as a basis for economic policy analysis and decisions. The panel expressed the highest confidence in consumer price statistics and the lowest confidence in labour market statistics, and widely viewed improvement to labour market statistics as the most important for strengthening the conduct of economic policy.

Several of these indicators are already established or previously published, while others remain under development and are currently supported by explanatory narrative. As the portfolio and its performance framework evolve, we will continue to refine existing measures and introduce new indicators where they provide a stronger assessment of outcomes, impact and long-term sustainability. Future updates will place greater emphasis on outcome-focused measures alongside delivery and capability indicators, providing a more comprehensive assessment of progress, risks and the impact of improvement activity across the SES portfolio.

This infographic shows the current set of KPIs.

The Waiting Room remains an important part of the Surveys and Economic Statistics (SES) portfolio. It reflects our continued commitment to prioritisation, realistic planning and the careful sequencing of change activity across surveys and economic statistics. As set out in the July update, the volume of worthwhile improvement activity exceeds our current capacity to deliver everything at once. The Waiting Room provides a transparent mechanism for recognising that demand, while ensuring that only work with sufficient clarity, ownership, readiness and resource enters active delivery. Work in the Waiting Room remains important, but progressing it prematurely would risk undermining delivery confidence in higher-priority activity and stretching scarce specialist capability too thinly.

There have been no changes to the SES delivery portfolio since the July update. Capacity has not yet been released to enable expansion of the SES portfolio, however the ONS has recently approved work for an applicant tracker that will go some way to mitigating our recruitment challenges.

Activities continue to be reviewed through established governance processes and will only move into active delivery when dependencies, scope, resource requirements and enabling support are sufficiently mature to support successful delivery. This disciplined approach helps ensure that delivery commitments remain achievable and that resources remain focused on the work that will have the greatest impact on the quality, resilience and trustworthiness of ONS surveys and economic statistics.

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) telephone operations (TO) incident highlighted weaknesses in operational oversight, workforce planning, management information, escalation arrangements and organisational resilience. Since the incident, activity has focused on two objectives:

• stabilising operational performance

• implementing longer-term improvements that address the lessons identified in the independent review and Telephone Services Review (TSR)

Together, these actions will support continued recovery, while creating a more sustainable and resilient operating model for telephone operations.

Governance and oversight

Immediate recovery actions

• Strengthened operational governance through new operations boards, enhanced management reporting and routine performance reviews.

• Increased senior leadership focus on operational risks, performance and recovery progress.

• Established clear ownership of recommendations and improvement actions.

Longer-term improvement

• Embed governance arrangements that provide stronger challenge, assurance and visibility of operational risks before significant operational changes are implemented.

• Ensure operational impacts, dependencies and trade-offs are routinely assessed through the TSR governance framework and wider Social Surveys Division (SSD) Operational Assessment of our field collection processes.

Resource planning and management

Immediate recovery actions

• Increased telephone operations interviewer numbers from a low of 125 to 144 in September, with resources forecast to reach the target level of 155 at the end of October.

• Improved resource forecasting and deployment to support LFS recovery.

Longer-term improvement

• Introduce enhanced workforce management capability to support workforce forecasting, automated scheduling, leave management, demand and capacity modelling. 

• Establish a mature workforce planning function capable of understanding future demand, workforce availability and operational risk months in advance.

Monitoring and management information

Immediate recovery actions

• Enhanced management reporting and operational monitoring to improve visibility of performance.

• Increased use of operational data in governance and performance discussions.

Longer-term improvement

• Implement enhanced contact center technology, providing real-time visibility of call demand, interviewer availability, queue management and operational performance.

• Create integrated management information that provides a single view of operational performance, supports evidence-based decision making and enables earlier identification of emerging risks.

Escalation and accountability

Immediate recovery actions

• Clarified ownership of operational risks and recovery actions.

• Strengthened operational reporting routes and risk escalation processes.

Longer-term improvement

• Embed clear accountability, escalation thresholds and decision-making responsibilities across telephone operations.

• Ensure risks are identified, escalated and acted upon consistently, reducing reliance on individual judgement and improving organisational control.

Operational expertise and communication

Immediate recovery actions

• Increased engagement between operational leaders, managers and support functions to strengthen understanding of performance challenges and recovery priorities.

• Improved visibility of operational performance information across management teams.

Longer-term improvement

• Further develop a culture of constructive challenge, collaboration and evidence-based decision making.

• Ensure operational expertise is routinely incorporated into decisions affecting survey delivery, workforce deployment and service changes.

Operational resilience and maturity

Immediate recovery actions

• Restored interviewer capacity through accelerated recruitment and deployment, increasing telephone operations interviewer numbers from 125 to 144 by September, with plans in place to reach the assessed operating requirement of 155 in early October.

• Introduced enhanced daily and weekly performance monitoring, giving operational leaders earlier visibility of staffing, workload, achieved interviews and emerging delivery pressures.

• Strengthened governance and escalation arrangements, with clear senior ownership of recovery actions, routine review of operational risks and defined routes for timely intervention.

• Rebalanced resources and operational priorities to protect LFS delivery; these actions supported recovery in LFS Waves 2 to 5, with the achieved sample reaching 6,070 in the latest four-week rolling period, above the equivalent periods in both 2025 and 2019.

Longer-term improvement

• Build a more resilient and intelligence-led operating model through enhanced workforce planning, real-time operational management, stronger governance and improved leadership capability.

• Continue embedding lessons learned across SSD through the SSD Operational Assessment, ensuring improvements extend beyond telephone operations and strengthen resilience across the wider survey portfolio.

Evidence of recovery and next steps

Performance indicators show that recovery actions are having a positive effect. Interviewer numbers have increased, achieved sample levels have improved, and stronger governance and monitoring arrangements are now in place. While these actions have helped stabilise performance, work continues to fully implement the recommendations from the Lessons Learned Review and TSR.

The focus now shifts from recovery to sustainability. Over the coming months, the implementation of enhanced workforce management and contact centre software, together with strengthened governance, workforce planning and operational assurance, will help create a modern, resilient and evidence-led telephone operations service. Alongside this, the wider SSD Operational Assessment provides an opportunity to embed and scale lessons learned across social survey operations, and the wider ONS, reducing future risk and supporting the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of survey delivery.