Overview

• The Devereux Review identified deep-seated planning and budgeting failures at the ONS and recommended a temporary split of the national statistician and permanent secretary roles.
• The UK Statistics Authority and Cabinet Office have backed the leadership separation to sharpen oversight of the agency’s core statistics.
• The government has allocated £10m over two years to recruit up to 150 economic data specialists and overhaul survey methods.
• Persistent low response rates to the Labour Force Survey and errors in consumer price indices have raised concerns over past employment and inflation figures.
• The Bank of England has warned that unreliable ONS numbers risk complicating its interest rate decisions.