Director General James Benford says progress is being made but “there is still much to do” as the Office for National Statistics resets milestones and refocuses resources on core statistics quality.
The Office for National Statistics has reset the milestones in its economic statistics recovery programme, redirecting resources away from lower-priority analytical work to concentrate on the quality and credibility of core outputs including GDP, prices and labour market data. The move follows a systemic review by the Office for Statistics Regulation, which identified problems with survey operations, data quality and internal systems — and called for a coordinated improvement plan.
The figures show the scale of the task. ONS reported that its March to May 2026 Labour Force Survey rolling dataset contains around 80,000 responses, comparable with previous three-month periods — but an operational issue identified in June 2026 led to temporary reductions in quality for some labour market releases, with imputation used to replace missing data. ONS says lessons from that incident are being fed back into processes and contingency planning.
Short-term data gaps matter for Kent. Kent County Council, Medway Council and NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board all draw on ONS labour market and population statistics to plan funding, services and local economic strategy. Any period of reduced accuracy in those figures can affect how skills gaps, employment trends and population pressures in the county are assessed — and, in turn, what support programmes are commissioned.
The recovery plan has two cornerstones: a transformed Labour Force Survey and a new Statistical Business Register. That second element is chiefly relevant for Kent, where logistics, ports, tourism and agriculture are major sectors — and where better business-level data could sharpen analysis of how those industries are performing.
OSR set out requirements for ONS’s plan and roadmap to restore confidence, and said it would continue to monitor delivery, expecting sustained focus on quality and transparency. Some economists and researchers have argued that confidence in ONS outputs was damaged by past revisions — above all in retail sales and labour market statistics — and that tangible, consistent improvement over time is what will count.
ONS has committed to quarterly public progress reports on its improvement plan, with reporting due to have started by the end of 2025. James Benford, Director General for Surveys and Economic Statistics at ONS, has publicly stated that trustworthy, independent statistics are essential for critical economic and societal decisions. But the quarterly reporting commitment means there will be regular, public checkpoints against which progress can be measured.
Source: @ONS