Good practice for using official statistics: guidance for non-statistical staff
Updated 8 March 2023
Applies to England
The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 established the UK Statistics Authority and required it to draw up a Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The Code of Practice was published in February 2018 and provides a statement of good practice to be applied to Official Statistics in the UK.
In order to comply with the Code, staff who are not statisticians must follow this guidance:
- when preparing any publication containing statistics, including statistics taken from administrative or management information, you must involve statistical professionals at the earliest opportunity
- you must not use unpublished statistics without the advice of a statistical professional
- you must not selectively quote favourable data from any unpublished data set
- decisions taken by statistical professionals are final
- any publication containing official statistics must provide information relating to their quality, reliability and usability
- pre-release access to official statistics is a privilege, you must not disclose any information, nor seek to alter it in any way
- ignoring any of the above may constitute a breach of the Code and result in an investigation by the UK Statistics Authority and a published report to Parliament
1. Further help
If you are unclear about what course of action to take, or about any of the guidance above, contact Ofqual바카라 사이트™s Head of Profession for Statistics, Nadir Zanini at statistics@ofqual.gov.uk. If you are unable to reach Nadir, you can call the National Statistician Helpline on 020 7014 2350. is available for reference.