National Statistical

Permanent Secretary, Darren Tierney, discusses how the ONS will continue to strengthen the quality, timeliness and resilience of its statistics, with its new three-year Business Plan.   

At the ONS we have made a clear and straightforward commitment: to deliver dependable statistics, communicated clearly, as a modern, high-performing organisation that supports better decision-making across the UK. 

From publishing our first Prices output using grocery scanner data, to collecting business price surveys fully electronically, and ending our reliance on the International Passenger Survey for producing estimates of migration, I’m proud of the progress we have made over the last year.  

But while we’ve established real momentum in making these improvements, we’ve also learned more about the complexity and scale of the change still required. The Business Plan we have published today sets out a disciplined, transparent approach to how we will sustain progress over the next three years and meet the ambitions we set out in our delivery plans. 

Improved quality and trustworthiness  

Of highest priority is continuing to transform our labour market statistics. Work continues towards a transition to the new Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), with the first evidence-led readiness assessment in July 2026 and 2027 remaining the most likely for transitioning to the TLFS for our headline labour market statistics. 

Confidence is already rebuilding with all major design changes to the TLFS now implemented, as well as responses on the existing Labour Force Survey recovered to close to pre-pandemic levels. 

Recently, we published our latest quarterly updates on the Economic Statistics Plan and Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan, and we will be looking to integrate the two in the coming months ahead of the next update due in the summer.  Alongside this, implementing the Statistical Business Register is one of our major commitments, as well as transforming our Annual Business Survey. 

Statistics that are timely and relevant to national priorities 

We will continue to build on the work we’ve done to improve quality and coherence across economic, population and social statistics. 

We have introduced a tiering model for our outputs based on the level of expected impact on users and the decisions they inform. This helps us regularly review and prioritise work, and ensure quality improvements are directed where needed most. In addition, our new “waiting room” mechanism enables us to sequence complex change in a responsible way, ensuring we only progress significant change activity when it can be fully resourced, and be more transparent and realistic in what we can deliver. Together, these approaches mean we can be clear about what we are working on, why, and in what order, so we can secure confidence from our users.  

An organisation that is efficient, resilient and adaptable 

A key component of our Plan is preparing for Census 2031 – a digital first, nationwide survey making the best use of administrative data and modern technology while taking steps to enable participation for those who are digitally excluded.  And our work to develop a new ONS website will improve how users find, understand and explore information, and make access to our statistics quicker and easier.  

Innovation is also central to improving quality and so I am proud that the ONS was one of the first national statistics institutes to use generative AI in producing official statistics. Our in‑house ClassifAI is now coding labour market data, while a large language model has halved processing time for occupation coding in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. These are practical tools that support our ambition, and we will continue to scale their responsible use across our processes.  

All of the measures in our Business Plan support our three key strategic objectives across the three years ahead: to deliver and continuously improve an agreed portfolio of statistics, deliver agreed essential services of a National Statistics Office that support the accessible use of our data and statistics, and to build essential capability across our people, culture, data and technology required by the ONS today and in the future.   

It is intentionally outcome-led and transparent – and we will be reporting progress openly, including where milestones are moved – to ensure that resources, risk and benefits remain balanced. We will continue working in the open and inviting feedback to inform priorities, ensuring our statistics focus on what matters most. 

There is still much to do, but the direction is clear, the progress is underway, and by focusing on quality over quantity, we can deliver the statistics that the country can rely on with confidence.