Methodology

This page describes how UK Stats selects, presents and maintains statistical data.

Data sources

All data is sourced from accredited UK official statistics — organisations that publish under the UK Statistics Authority framework, or equivalent bodies such as NHS England.

Primary sources include:

  • Office for National Statistics (ONS) — economy, population, employment, health
  • NHS England — NHS waiting times and activity
  • Department for Education (DfE) — educational attainment
  • HM Land Registry / ONS UK House Price Index — housing
  • HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) — tax receipts, earnings

How figures are updated

We manually check source publications on a regular schedule aligned with their release calendars. When a new figure is available and verified, we update the relevant stat page. The "last updated" date on each page reflects when we made the update, not necessarily the reference period of the data.

Seasonal adjustment

Where the official source publishes seasonally adjusted figures (e.g. unemployment, GDP), we use those for the headline value. Non-adjusted figures are noted where relevant.

Rounding

We present figures as published by the source. Where the source rounds to one decimal place, so do we.

What we do not do

  • We do not adjust, normalise, or re-weight published data
  • We do not produce forecasts or projections
  • We do not combine data across sources to produce composite indicators

Open Government Licence

Official UK statistics are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which permits reproduction with attribution. All stat pages carry the required attribution.

Corrections

If you believe a figure on this site is incorrect, please raise an issue on GitHub with a link to the correcting source.