Health and social care statistical outputs consultation: response

Question 1

Introduction

Accepted Answer

In line with good practice, and the Code of Practice for Statistics, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and NHS England jointly launched a consultation on health and social care statistical outputs. The consultation ran from 12 December 2023 to 5 March 2024.

There were 2 aims of the consultation:

to seek views on possible changes to products published by DHSC (including the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)), NHSBSA, UKHSA, ONS, and NHS England
to seek an understanding of how clear and valuable users find the current statistical system

The consultation consisted of:

an opening section to draw out general views on the health and social care statistical landscape
optional topic-based sections that presented proposals for the future of statistical products in those topic areas and invited topic-specific feedback

For further details see our consultation document.

Question 2

Total responses

Accepted Answer

We received a total of 373 responses. Of these:

74 were from individuals sharing personal views and experiences
134 were from individuals sharing professional views
165 were on behalf of an organisation

The table below shows which sector respondents were from, excluding respondents sharing personal views and experiences who were not asked this question.

Table 1: count of which sector respondents worked in (for those who responded as either individuals sharing professional views or on behalf of an organisation)

Sector	Count
Public sector	191
Private sector	10
Not for profit	76
Other or unknown	22

‘Other’ includes responses such as academia, third sector, professional bodies, as well as respondents who said they worked in a combination of public, private, and not for profit organisations.

Question 3

Engagement

Accepted Answer

We communicated the launch of the consultation through targeted communications with known statistical stakeholders, including through United Kingdom Health Statistics Steering Group (UKHSSG) theme groups, and through a blog on the ONS website.

Statistics producers also engaged via their existing user engagement forums, and we promoted the consultation to other government departments through statistics heads of profession.

During the consultation window we held a webinar through the analysis function website, to raise awareness of the consultation and respond to questions. We also published a blog post on the analysis function website to promote the consultation and remind statistics users to respond.

Question 4

Overview of methodology

Accepted Answer

Responses were submitted through the consultation survey link. In exceptional circumstances we accepted written responses, which are included in the counts and analyses.

The consultation included multiple choice questions, as well as open-ended questions where respondents could write detailed comments. There were no word limits on the number of words respondents could include in the free-text boxes.

While considering the findings, it should be noted that respondents were self-selecting, and participation in the consultation process was voluntary. We do not know how representative the responses are of user groups in their entirety, nor of all stakeholders who access and use our statistics.

Quantitative analysis

For the responses to the multiple-choice questions, we conducted descriptive analyses to draw out:

the total number of respondents
the number of respondents to each question and topic area
the counts of responses to the multiple-choice questions in the ‘General feedback on health and social care statistics’ section

Duplicate responses were removed (for example, where there were multiple responses from the same organisation with the same responses to the questions). Responses where the respondent indicated they did not wish to respond to that question (for example, ‘N/A’ [not applicable]) were also removed from counts of responses to that question.

To note, counts of responses to multiple-choice questions are provided for transparency. However, given the mix of responses from different sized organisations, and from individuals, we do not consider it appropriate to weight responses, and advise caution when interpreting these figures. Additionally, sample sizes were small, particularly for topic areas. Therefore, no statistical inferences can be made.

Where tables present counts of responses to multiple choice questions, categories are sometimes merged due to small numbers.

Qualitative analysis

For the responses to the free-text questions in the ‘General feedback on health and social care statistics’ section of the consultation, a cross-organisation analytical group conducted thematic analyses. This involved sorting the data into a charting document so that responses could be analysed by question. The group systematically read through each free-text response, identifying important themes.

To note, we cannot assume that all related themes or aspects of a theme were captured by responses to the consultation. It is possible that other data users not reached by this consultation might have alternative opinions or different requirements from the statistics we produce.

As qualitative analysis is a subjective approach, members of the group quality assured a portion of each other’s work to minimise researcher bias.

For the responses to questions in the ‘Feedback on statistical topic areas’ sections, the analytical group systematically read through each response, identifying feedback on the landscape generally for each area, and publication-specific feedback. Feedback was reviewed and organised by specific topic and publication and was shared with topic-area leads and publication leads, who have reviewed responses to inform future outputs.

Question 5

General feedback and overarching themes

Accepted Answer

General feedback section

All respondents were asked each of the questions in this section. However, not all respondents answered every question, and so numbers may not add up to the total number of responses shown in the previous section. For those who responded via the survey link, the multiple-choice questions were mandatory.

Counts have been provided for transparency. However, caution should be taken when interpreting these numbers or combining across types of respondents, due to the mix of different sized organisations, and individuals responding to this consultation.

Process of finding statistics

Respondents were asked: “How do you find the process of finding the health and social care statistics that you need?”

There were 363 responses:

74 from individuals sharing personal views or experiences
133 from individuals sharing professional views
156 on behalf of an organisation

Table 2: count of responses to the question “How do you find the process of finding the health and social care statistics that you need?”, by capacity responding

How do you find the process of finding the health and social care statistics that you need?	Count of responses from individuals sharing personal views and experiences	Count of responses from individuals sharing professional views	Count of responses on behalf of an organisation	Total counts
Easy or very easy	15	47	40	102
Neither easy nor difficult	24	47	72	143
Difficult or very difficult	35	39	44	118

Respondents were asked to explain their answer. There were 252 responses. The main feedback was:

once users know that the data exists on a particular site it is easy to find
however, statistics can be difficult to find, due to:
- being spread across multiple sources and in inconsistent formats; respondents said that there was duplication, with data often not being comparable, or inconsistencies in reporting, timeframes and breakdowns, which can make it hard to decide which data to use
- a lack of signposting to other data or websites, with some calls for a single portal or directory to help with finding statistics
- organisations having an inconsistent approach to announcing releases, and release calendars not being updated frequently
- a lack of data access, where it is difficult to obtain the underlying data either in itself or in an appropriate format (for example, machine readable), meta-data, or time-series data
- a lack of data availability where data is not available on specific topic areas or at a particular level
- platforms and websites having poor accessibility or being difficult to navigate, with suggested improvements around avoiding technical terms and acronyms; providing a range of visualisations; better labelling of tables

Format of data

Statistics can be presented in different formats including:

short statistical commentary, highlighting important points
longer statistical reports, with chapters on specific topics
data provided in formatted spreadsheets, with metadata and explanatory footnotes
downloadable aggregated data, typically in a comma separated values (CSV) format, with metadata or explanatory footnotes
data dashboards and other interactive tools

Respondents were asked to provide feedback on the format that health and social care data and statistics are provided in. There were 217 responses to this question. The main feedback was:

respondents liked data to be in a range of formats, to meet the needs of different audiences; the format needed depends on the user and purpose
respondents discussed the usability of data; they said there was sometimes a lack of consistency in the types of files available and headings or variable names, and search terms were not always intuitive, and that downloadable data can be badly formatted and needs work to make it useable
respondents were concerned disclosure control of small numbers can make it difficult to realise the potential insights

Dashboards and interactive tools

Respondents were asked: “ONS, DHSC, NHS England and UKHSA are all exploring the proposal to publish a higher proportion of outputs in a dashboard or interactive tool format. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this proposal?”

There were 363 responses:

74 from individuals sharing personal views or experiences
133 from individuals sharing professional views
156 on behalf of an organisation

Table 3: count of responses to the question on the extent to which respondents agree with the proposal to publish a higher proportion of outputs in a dashboard or interactive tool format, by capacity responding

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this proposal?	Count of responses from individuals sharing personal views and experiences	Count of responses from individuals sharing professional views	Count of responses on behalf of an organisation	Total counts
Agree or strongly agree	44	83	88	215
Neither agree nor disagree	19	27	55	101
Disagree or strongly disagree	11	23	13	47

Respondents were asked to explain their answer. There were 233 responses to this question. While views were split, respondents were generally in favour of publishing a higher proportion of outputs in dashboard or interactive tool format. The main feedback was:

dashboards or interactive tools were useful particularly for those who are not experts in the data; they allowed users to easily digest statistics, and to drill down into the data
dashboards were useful for bringing related data together, transparency and user engagement with statistics
dashboards saved time and effort and enabled quicker decision making
respondents outlined several requirements or priorities for dashboards in their feedback:
- exporting and extracting data should be easy. The complete underlying dataset needs to be available, in appropriate format (respondents mentioned machine-readable, spreadsheet or CSV, or via an application programming interface (API) link for further analysis of data, and outputs and visualisations (for example, charts and graphs) should also be exportable
- metadata, caveats, limitations and commentaries should be provided to reduce risk of misinterpretation, as well as user guides on how to use dashboards
- dashboards need to be updated regularly and remain consistent over time for trend analysis
- data needs to be easy to reference and link to, and historical data needs to be retained over time
- dashboards need to be accessible, well designed and developed in consultation with users
- dashboards should present numbers as well as percentages as users may ‘over-interpret’ data based on small numbers; respondents also said confidence intervals are useful
- provide granular data, at the lowest geography, and cut by inequalities as well as presenting data at the national level
there were respondents that commented that dashboards were less useful and should not be prioritised over other formats of data, or over publishing more data or more timely data
dashboards were also deemed less useful by some respondents because they often provide limited insights, are less useful for specialist users who are familiar with the data and do not typically allow for further analysis
other respondents cautioned that dashboards should be used sparingly and were not always appropriate

Commentary around statistical products

Respondents were asked: “ONS, DHSC and NHS England are all exploring the proposal to:

reduce the level of detailed commentary provided alongside statistical outputs
reduce how frequently commentary is provided alongside statistical outputs

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this proposal?”

There were 363 responses:

74 from individuals sharing personal views or experiences
133 from individuals sharing professional views
156 on behalf of an organisation

Table 4: count of responses to the question on the extent to which respondents agree with the proposal to reduce the level of detail and frequency of statistical commentaries, by capacity responding

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this proposal?	Count of responses from individuals sharing personal views and experiences	Count of responses from individuals sharing professional views	Count of responses on behalf of an organisation	Total counts
Agree or strongly agree	13	36	33	82
Neither agree nor disagree	14	42	61	117
Disagree or strongly disagree	47	55	62	164

Respondents were asked to explain their answer. There were 242 responses to this question. While responses were mixed, respondents generally were not in favour of reducing detail or frequency of statistical commentary. The main feedback and concerns respondents had were:

the required level of detail and frequency of commentaries depends on varying user needs
detailed commentary can help interpret data, whereas high level summaries help to digest the important points
commentary is invaluable as it provides context, insight, enables decision making and helps to avoid misinterpretation; it also improves accessibility and transparency
there were concerns that a reduction in detail and frequency of commentary could make data less accessible, and open to misinterpretation
there were also concerns around losing granular insights, difficulty in understanding trends and responding quickly to changes
other respondents said reducing commentary was sensible as it is time consuming to produce and were supportive of the concept of automated commentary
there were respondents that said a reduction in commentary was considered acceptable if the frequency of outputs, data availability and data quality are not compromised, and metadata and important headlines are still provided
respondents suggested developing a framework for the appropriate level and frequency of commentary to avoid inconsistencies

Prioritisation of quality dimensions

Given the complexities of data collection, validation and analysis in health and social care statistics, it is not always possible to prioritise all the following quality dimensions:

relevance of health and social care statistics to meet user needs in terms of content and coverage
accuracy and reliability, in other words how close the estimated result in health and social care statistics is to the true result
timeliness and punctuality of health and social care statistics
accessibility and clarity of health and social care statistics, including quality of metadata and accompanying advice, accessible data sets and visual content
coherence and comparability of health and social care statistics over time and geography (as health and social care is devolved, coherence of statistics across the UK can be challenging); where statistics are not comparable, explanations of different methodologies is recommended
availability of health and social care data at local level geographies

Respondents provided feedback about which of these quality dimensions should be prioritised. There were 249 responses to this question. Respondents placed varying importance on the quality dimensions, resulting in there being no clear theme of one dimension being the highest priority. The main feedback was:

prioritisation of quality dimensions is dependent on the context
all dimensions listed were described as important and that diminishing any one of these would lessen the overall quality of data
if it is it not possible to fulfil all the quality dimensions, the best data available should be provided with caveats around the limitations
it was acknowledged that 100% accuracy and reliability are not always feasible, but that this should be made clear
respondents said the need for timely data is dependent on the topic area and context, as some topic areas may need data more urgently than others, and if data is published late, this is acceptable where there is a clear explanation
there were respondents that said the frequency of publication takes precedence over granularity of data
other respondents said that accuracy and reliability were deemed important but not at the cost of timeliness and punctuality of data, whereas others said that timeliness and punctuality were lower priority, and that quality should be prioritised over quantity
there were respondents that said that having data available at the most granular level possible (there were asks for more detailed geographical data, and data by inequalities) was high priority to provide insight and assist in decision making
other respondents acknowledged that having data at local level was often not possible and potentially misleading

Question 6

Response to general feedback

Accepted Answer

In this section we set out overarching actions we are taking in response to the general feedback received to the ‘General feedback on health and social care statistical topic areas’ questions, including to the 2 specific proposals to:

publish a higher proportion of outputs in a dashboard or interactive tool format
reduce the level of detailed commentary and reduce the frequency commentary is provided

Proposal to publish a higher proportion of outputs in a dashboard or interactive tool format

After reviewing the feedback to this proposal, we will consider moving to dashboards where appropriate and where they improve coherence in a given area.

As the use of dashboards in government is relatively new, best practices are still being developed. Guidance already exists from the Government Analysis Function on their data visualisation for dashboards page. The Health and Social Care Statistics Leadership Forum (HSCSLF) are exploring options to ensure we are collaborating across health organisations to improve our dashboards. Feedback received through this consultation will continue to inform this work.

Proposal to reduce the level of detailed commentary and reduce the frequency commentary is provided alongside statistical outputs

After reviewing the feedback to this proposal, commentary will continue where appropriate and proportionate to do so.

However, in some cases this may mean a reduction in the detail of commentary or frequency that it is updated, and there may be instances where we move to data tables only. We will notify users when there are planned changes to existing publications.

We will not reduce metadata or important information needed to understand and interpret the data.

Overarching actions

Data availability

Respondents commented on data availability both as part of the general section questions and in response to topic-specific questions. Comments included requests for topic-specific data and more generally for greater geographical and health inequalities breakdowns.

This feedback was passed on to the relevant topic leads and publication leads, and we will continue to review what is possible and appropriate to make available.

Improving the process of findings statistics

To improve the process of finding statistics, ONS has updated its interactive statistics database tool, which aims to bring together health and care statistics from across government and UK nations in one place.

The research and statistics release calendar lists publications across government, including NHS England, UKHSA, NHSBSA and DHSC (including OHID), as well as upcoming publications. Similarly, ONS publishes its own release calendar.

Work is underway to explore the most valuable tools and options for improving signposting and the process of finding statistics.

Accessibility and presentation of data

Respondents commented on improving accessibility and presentation of data.

We are committed to meeting government accessibility requirements. More information on accessibility can be found in the:

Similarly, our organisations aim to present data in accordance with the Government Analysis Function’s Data visualisation guidance.

Format of data

We are committed to providing accessible and machine-readable outputs and we will continue to engage with stakeholders on the most appropriate and useful formats of data, which was also reflected in the feedback.

Question 7

Statistical topic areas: feedback and actions

Accepted Answer

Overview

There were 17 topic area sections, and a final section to comment on any other topic area not listed. These were optional, and respondents selected from a list the topic areas they wanted to provide feedback on.

The number of responses to each topic section are below. To note, these are the numbers who responded to any question in that topic area section. The number of responses to each question within the topic area section will vary.

There were responses relevant to a topic section that were provided outside of that topic section (for example, responses in the ‘General feedback’ section). These are included in the review of responses - however, they are not included in the counts below.

Table 5: counts of responses to each topic area

Topic area	Count
Adult social care	80
Cancer	59
Child, maternal and reproductive health	74
COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	53
Disability, learning disability and autism	65
Elective activity	57
End of life care	38
Health inequalities	103
Major conditions	66
Mental health	80
Mortality	97
Obesity, physical activity and diet	63
Overarching health and social care outputs	78
Primary care, community health and oral health	69
Smoking, drugs and alcohol	63
Urgent, emergency and acute care	49
Workforce and estates	48

We are making changes to our statistical products to move towards an improved, more coherent and efficient health and social care statistical landscape. Additionally, we are ensuring that the resources are deployed in producing statistics for maximum possible benefit.

Changes to products set out in this response include:

merging and rationalising products to reduce duplication and improve the user experience
changing the frequency of products
changing the scope and/or volume of products
reducing commentary where appropriate (with no reduction in metadata or important information needed to understand and interpret the data)
reviewing products, with the aim of improving the quality of these

The following sections set out the current plans for publications for each of the topic areas in the consultation, compiled by topic leads across organisations.

The level of detail will differ across topic areas and publications due to the differing number and detail of proposals and responses in each section. For a summary of the changes, see Annex 1.

We will continue to engage with users and review and evolve our statistical products to meet priorities. We recognise the need for a better understanding of health inequalities and variation, to help us improve health outcomes.

Question 8

1.  Adult social care

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

The adult social care data landscape has changed in recent years. We have seen improved timeliness and accessibility of data, but there are still many limitations.

We know that data is fundamental to the delivery of high-quality care and good outcomes for those who receive care and support. This is why DHSC’s adult social care data programme aims to transform how adult social care data is collected, shared and used. For example, in 2023, we moved away from collecting aggregate data and towards using (anonymised) person-level data, known as client-level data (CLD). CLD gives us more timely and granular national information about adult social care service users, who are supported by local authorities in England. The move to CLD also brings social care collections more into line with person-level NHS collections, using patient NHS number to enable data to be accurately and appropriately linked.

The action plan for adult social care only covers publications in 2024 to 2025. If any further changes are considered, NHS England and DHSC will consult with users as well as drawing further on the consultation responses.

Overall, NHS England is planning on streamlining its outputs on adult social care data including reducing commentary, data quality reports and data tables produced for some publications.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

For the ‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to incorporate the ‘Deferred payment agreements’ publication and reduce supporting commentary.

The ‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’ will remain similar to the previous publication. Although NHS England will reduce the data tables, the full data used to produce the tables will continue to be provided in CSV format.

Annex 2 provides further detail on the changes to this publication.

For Adult social care in England, monthly statistics, produced by DHSC, there was no proposal in the consultation. The publication was first published by DHSC in May 2021 and included weekly COVID and Infection Control Fund-related data sourced from the Capacity Tracker. Its primary purpose was to provide timely data on COVID-19 and its impact on the adult social care sector, and also included data on flu vaccinations and visiting in care homes. Since the pandemic the publication has evolved to include more non-COVID related data including insights from CLD and information on care provider digital social care record uptake.

The main feedback was to continue with the publication of these statistics and to include detailed commentary to add context as more metrics are added.

DHSC will continue to publish ‘Adult social care in England, monthly statistics’ monthly, and will include updated commentary and background methodology information as more metrics are added.

For ‘Adult social care statistics in England: an overview’, published by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

NHS England will no longer publish ‘Adult social care statistics in England: an overview’.

This is to reduce the burden on teams as the data is readily available in other adult social care publications.

Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England

For ‘Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England’, produced by ONS, there was no proposal in the consultation.

Responses noted that these estimates are used for a range of purposes and there are no alternative sources for these estimates. Suggestions included to further break down figures by local authority or NHS funding, and to explore alternative data sources to improve the data quality.

We also received comments regarding the restriction of the data to England. The data ONS receives is provided by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and there is no equivalent data collected by Care Inspectorate Wales that we have been made aware of. Funding for this work comes from DHSC, which has a remit of England only. ONS regularly meets with a representative from the Welsh Government, who is aware of why these estimates are limited to England, and who is investigating alternate approaches for estimating the population of self-funders using Welsh Government data. ONS would welcome the opportunity work closer with the Welsh Government to produce self-funding estimates in Wales, pending resource.

Further releases in the ‘Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England’ series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity Tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.

Deferred payments agreements

For ‘Deferred payment agreements’ produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to publish as part of the ‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’ and reduce supporting commentary.

There are no changes planned to ‘Deferred payment agreements’ from previous years.

Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England

For ‘Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England’, produced by ONS, there was no proposal in the consultation.

The main feedback was to increase accuracy of data and expand to all 4 UK nations.

Further releases in the ‘Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England’ series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity Tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not currently a priority.

‘Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983’, ‘Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)’ and ‘Safeguarding adults (SAC), England’

For ‘Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983’, ‘Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)’ and ‘Safeguarding adults (SAC), England’ (all produced by NHS England), there was a proposal to reduce supporting commentary.

No changes are planned from previous publications of ‘Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983’ and ‘Safeguarding adults (SAC), England’.

For ‘Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)’, no changes are planned, except where the agreed change for measuring ‘fully assessed’ cases was added (see Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS), 2023 to 2024, background supporting information).

Life expectancy in care homes (England and Wales)

For ‘Life expectancy in care homes, England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to explore alternatives to census data to identify care homes residents and consider biennial publication frequency if feasible data sources found.

There are not currently any plans to produce further releases of ‘Life expectancy in care homes, England and Wales’ because of the reliance on census data for the care home resident population, which becomes increasingly inaccurate as we move further away from the census year.

Analysis of the text responses showed that people disagreed with the proposal to move to biennial publication, preferring more regular publication to avoid missing time-sensitive trends. There was general support for exploring alternatives to census data for more accurate data, with suggestions that we should consult with users on these alternatives, ensure we consider Wales in the alternative data sources and, if no suitable source of data found, to carry on with census data.

There are several proposed data sources for measuring the care home resident population (for example, DHSC’s Capacity Tracker), but significant methodological research and development is needed, and it is not guaranteed we will find a suitable alternative. Therefore, ONS proposes to pause publication of these statistics until the required development work has been completed. Once complete, ONS will review options for regular release. However, the development work required for this product is not currently a priority.

For ‘Measures from the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), England’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to align with any change to the ‘Personal social services adult social care survey’.

The ‘Measures from the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), England’ publication will see some reduction in the commentary and changes to the reported indicators. NHS England does not plan to provide CLD indicators or shadow statistics in the 2024 publication.

Annex 3 provides further detail on the changes to this publication.

The publication will cover the indicators listed in the 2023 to 2024 Adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), including 3 new indicators:

4B: the proportion of section 42 safeguarding enquiries where a risk was identified, and the reported outcome was that this risk was reduced or removed (safeguarding)
6A: the proportion of staff in the formal care workforce leaving their role in the past 12 months (workforce or Skills for Care)
6B: the percentage of residential adult social care providers rated good or outstanding by CQC

There are 4 indicators which were listed in the 2022 to 2023 ASCOF handbook but have been removed from the 2023 to 2024 ASCOF handbook, which will not be included in the publication:

1E: proportion of adults with a learning disability in paid employment
1F: proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services in paid employment
1H: proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services living independently, with or without support
4B: the proportion of people who use services who say that those services have made them feel safe and secure

For the ‘Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS), England’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to reduce the frequency of data collection and publication from annual to biennial and to reduce commentary in this publication.

The ‘Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS), England’ will continue on an annual basis. NHS England will reduce commentary in the main report and will reduce the data quality report.

Annex 4 provides further detail on the changes to this publication.

For the 2025 to 2026 output (collecting 2024 to 2025 data), local authorities will no longer be required to submit their materials to NHS England for review. Where local authorities add additional questions from the question bank, they are no longer required to check these with NHS England. Councils only need to contact NHS England to seek approval for new questions which have not previously been approved or do not appear in the question bank.

The requirement for local authorities to submit their materials to NHS England for sign-off was instigated as a one-off several years ago due to data quality concerns, with the intention to run for 2 years to improve consistency. This was achieved but the process became part of business as usual, which NHS England is no longer able to support. By allowing local authorities to only add a maximum of 6 additional pre-agreed questions from the question bank, NHS England is confident that the consistency of the materials will be retained while significantly reducing the burden of work.

For the ‘Personal social services adult social care survey’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to reduce the commentary in this publication.

For the ‘Personal social services adult social care survey’, NHS England will reduce commentary on the overall report and will omit some sections of the data quality report.

Annex 5 provides further detail on where changes are planned and indicates which outputs NHS England plans to include in the ‘Personal social services adult social care survey’ from 2024 to 2025 (reporting on 2023 to 2024 data).

For ‘Registered blind and partially sighted people’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to explore alternative data sources for this publication to reduce the data collection burden on providers and reduce supporting commentary.

There are no planned changes to ‘Registered blind and partially sighted people’. The report is next due in 2026 to 2027.

Question 9

2.  Cancer

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Official Statistics on cancer are predominantly published by the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), now part of NHS England. As an NHS organisation, NDRS collects patient data on cancer, congenital anomalies and rare diseases, and provides expert, timely analysis to support clinical teams, academics, charities and policymakers to help plan and improve treatments and healthcare in England.

Publications produced by NDRS are based on cancer registration data. Disease registration captures a patient’s complete journey from referral, diagnosis, treatment, outcomes, experience and survival. It does this through the collation, curation and combination of many differing data sources into a unified information resource. 

National cancer patient experience survey statistics, for both children and adults, are also published by NHS England, but not within NDRS. The survey is conducted by the Picker Institute Europe on behalf of NHS England. The ‘Cancer patient experience survey’ has been designed to:

monitor national progress on cancer care
provide information to drive local quality improvements
assist commissioners and providers of cancer care
inform the work of the various charities and stakeholder groups supporting cancer patients

NDRS welcomed the general acceptance of the proposed changes. NDRS remains committed to publishing reliable estimates in as much detail as possible in appropriate combinations of age, cancer type, cancer specific markers, deprivation, gender, geography and stage at diagnosis in all regular publications at the earliest opportunity. An increase of detail in one characteristic may mean less detail can be used in other characteristics for estimates to remain reliable.

NDRS is investing in a work programme that is designed to make the high-quality curated registration data needed for the registration and survival publications to become available more quickly. The ‘Rapid cancer registration data’ (RCRD) series will remain the most up-to-date set of estimates published by NDRS. This is less detailed than the high-quality registration data needed by the ‘Cancer registration statistics’ and ‘Cancer survival in England’ series but gives a good indication of trends in diagnoses.

To improve coherence, NDRS will:

explore publishing all their outputs in the same places as the rest of NHS England
explore with their counterparts across the UK about being able to publish UK-wide estimates
explore if a single API can be created for all their regular publications

There are 2 groups working to maximise the opportunities for greater coherence in cancer statistics across government departments in England and across the UK nations. These are the UK and Ireland Association of Cancer Registries (UKIACR) and the UKHSSG cancer theme.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’

For ‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’, produced by NDRS, there was a proposal to merge these publications.

‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’ will merge as planned. NDRS will further examine how to publish a wider range of health and administrative geographies, counts of incidence and mortality data together, and incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible.

In response to the comments received on cancer registration statistics, NDRS will:

examine how to publish a wider range of current health and administrative geographies in the public domain which permit for reliable estimates to be published while retaining appropriate disclosure control safeguards. Smaller sizes of geographies may require a reduction in detail in levels of other characteristics. This is in response to feedback about additional geographic granularity
publish counts of incidence and mortality data together where populations data is not yet available and publish rates of incidence and mortality together once populations data is available; this is in response to feedback about releasing this information at the same time
publish estimates of incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible, retaining the publication of data to support illustrating progress towards the ambition of 75% of patients with stageable cancers to be diagnosed at stages 1 and 2; this is in response to feedback about publishing incidence by stage at diagnosis

There were requests to publish estimates by ethnicity. To do this, regularly updated populations with reference to age, ethnicity, gender and geography are needed. Although we collect diagnoses with ethnicity recorded, these populations are not currently available. To publish mortality estimates by ethnicity, death certificates coded with ethnicity are also needed. These are not currently available.

‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’

For ‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’, produced by NDRS, there was a proposal to merge these publications to improve coherence.

‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’ will merge as planned by the next release planned for October 2025. NDRS will undertake further work to expand the range of survival estimates for groups by cancer site and age group, to explore creating trend estimates for current estimates, and to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations and survival approach to employ, to address request for survival estimates by routes to diagnosis.

In response to the comments received on cancer survival statistics, NDRS will:

expand the range of the survival estimates published for children, teenagers and young adults, giving estimates by cancer site and age-group; this is in response to feedback about additional granularity
explore the creation of a trend estimate to accompany the current estimates

Survival estimates require the largest cohort sizes of all NDRS publications because of the time component of the calculations and the need (in adults) to compare the survival of cancer patients to that of the general population.

The survival outputs present estimates in as much detail as the number of cancer patients diagnosed each year permits.

The smallest geography for which cancer survival estimates by age, cancer site, gender and geography may be published at is for integrated care boards (ICBs) because of the number of cancer patients diagnosed each year.

The number of cancer patients diagnosed each year and the distribution of stage at diagnosis for many cancers means that survival estimates by age, cancer site, gender and stage at diagnosis are not reliable for sub-England geographies.

To publish cancer survival estimates by ethnicity, regularly updated estimates of populations and mortality with reference to age, ethnicity, gender and geography are needed. These are not currently available.

There were also requests for additional survival estimates to be published by routes to diagnosis and for treatment combinations. The data feeds for routes to diagnosis are not yet fully synchronised with those of the incidence data, so this request cannot be implemented now. To present survival estimates by treatment combinations, NDRS will have to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations for each common cancer and the appropriate survival approach to employ. NDRS will create project proposals for both these potential publications and get them appropriately assessed and prioritised.

Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data

For ‘Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data’, produced by NDRS, there was no proposal in the consultation.

In response to the comments received on ‘Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data’, NDRS will address the request for more timely data by exploring publishing this as part of the RCRD series, which is approximately 4 months behind real time.

‘National cancer patient experience survey’ and ‘Under 16 cancer patient experience survey’

For ‘National cancer patient experience survey’ and ‘Under 16 cancer patient experience survey’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal for the reporting suite to be reviewed to assess whether any elements are no longer required.

NHS England will undertake further engagement with stakeholders and survey advisory groups when the ‘National cancer patient experience survey’ and ‘Under 16 cancer patient experience survey’ reporting suite is reviewed. NDRS will further consider making more granular and raw data available.

In response to the comments received on ‘National cancer patient experience survey’ and ‘Under 16 cancer patient experience survey’, NHS England will:

hold follow-up detailed engagement with stakeholders when we review the ‘National cancer patient experience survey’ reporting suite as part of re-contracting the survey provider; respondents told us there was not enough detail to comment on this proposal and would welcome further consultation
consider appropriateness of making more granular data available. Respondents would value access to raw data in order to explore more detailed analysis than is presented in the published official statistics - for example, different geographies, clinical and demographic breakdowns. This may provide a more efficient and effective service than centrally providing bespoke analytical requests
discuss specific suggestions with the survey advisory groups; respondents made suggestions for change in specific areas and our advisory groups contain experts who can help us work through their value and impact

Routes to diagnosis

For ‘Routes to diagnosis’, produced by NDRS, there was no proposal in the consultation.

NDRS will explore publishing more geographic breakdowns of the data in future updates of ‘Routes to diagnosis’. NDRS will test the combinations to prevent disclosure of patient identifiable data before implementing.

In response to the comments received on ‘Routes to diagnosis’, users commented on the timeliness of the publication. NDRS is unable to publish in a timelier manner due to the reliance on several data sources, some of which NDRS does not manage and some of which are not routinely updated. For this reason, a release schedule for ‘Routes to diagnosis’ is not currently possible. NDRS will add a prominent note explaining these dependencies and their impact on overall timeliness of the publication. An equivalent publication, based on the RCRD (Rapid cancer registration data: incidence and treatment dashboard) has been created to address this user need.

Users expressed a desire for further granularity in the data. More geographic splits are planned for future updates of the publication. Because of the risk of disclosure of patient identifiable data due to small numbers, specific combinations of cancer sites and geographies will be tested before being added. Ethnicity and deprivation data are currently available at England level, and due to small numbers, there is no current proposal to split these by geography below England level.

Feedback requested “survival by route of diagnosis and stage of diagnosis”. Survival by route to diagnosis and stage of diagnosis are already published, although limited to certain cancer groupings. The statistical methodology used to calculate survival in this publication is aligned with that used in ‘Cancer survival in England’. Survival estimates require the largest cohort sizes of all NDRS publications because of the time component of the calculations and the need (in adults) to compare the survival of cancer patients to that of the general population. For this reason, presenting routes to diagnosis for less common cancers, further split by stage at diagnosis, is not possible.

Question 10

3.  Child, maternal and reproductive health

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Statistics and data related to child and maternal health are produced by DHSC, NHS England, ONS and UKHSA. This action plan details those organisations’ activities in response to the consultation’s feedback.

Three recurring themes in feedback across multiple publications were:

a lack of awareness of which statistics are produced by which organisations, and therefore where to find relevant information
limited knowledge of which breakdowns are and are not already presented within our statistics
a desire for increased consistency between similar publications, where possible

DHSC, NHS England, ONS and UKHSA agreed to collaborate to produce shared signposting text, detailing which statistics are produced by which organisations, and how they compare and contrast with other publications. Having this information in one place, and regularly sharing it with the publications’ audiences alongside a new release, can improve awareness and understanding of the complete suite of official statistics on this topic.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Birth statistics, produced by ONS

In the consultation, ONS proposed the following changes to its birth statistics:

for ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’, to move priority tables to the ‘Births in England and Wales’ release and release as a dataset only, stopping the statistical bulletin
for ‘Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales’, to move priority tables to the ‘Births in England and Wales’ release
for ‘Births in England and Wales’, to include priority tables from ‘Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales’ and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ to this release; this release will include a statistical bulletin containing the priority data usually covered in the births characteristics bulletins

More information was requested on which tables are ‘priority tables’. There was some disagreement with streamlining.

ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the ‘Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales’ output and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release, and will consult users on this output’s suitability.

Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth

For ‘Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to change the data source to the Community Services Data Set (CSDS) and reduce frequency to annual.

There was some support for changing the data source, though CSDS geographical granularity and quality are concerns. There was general disagreement with the proposal to reduce frequency.

For ‘Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth’, DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.

Child and infant mortality in England and Wales

For ‘Child and infant mortality in England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to reduce the frequency of the analysis bulletin from annual to biennial, and publication of the birth cohort data tables to biennial.

This report consists of data tables on a birth cohort (deaths of infants who died before their first birthday) and a death cohort (stillbirths and deaths of children and infants).

There was some disagreement for this proposal. Reasons for disagreeing focused on the importance of regular reporting for monitoring, and existing timeliness being limited for deaths at the start of a year.

‘Child and infant mortality in England and Wales’ frequency will not change. However, the presentation of data and results may change as part of a wider restructure of ONS’s child health statistics.

Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years

For ‘Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to change the data source to the CSDS and reduce frequency to annual.

There was some support for changing data source, though CSDS geographical granularity and quality are concerns. There was disagreement with the proposal to reduce frequency.

For ‘Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years’, DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.

‘Child education’, ‘Child and maternal health profiles’ and ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’

There was a proposal to merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ and to merge both of these with ‘Child and maternal health profiles’ (all produced by DHSC). Additionally, there was a proposal to review these publications and that lesser-used indicators could be discontinued.

There was some support for merging these into a single place under ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. However, respondents said that more information is needed on which indicators are ‘lesser used’.

DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’with ‘Child and maternal health profiles’ and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.

Female genital mutilation

For ‘Female genital mutilation’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to discontinue the quarterly written report and Excel tables. Quarterly data would continue to be released as before via a dashboard and CSV file, as would the annual report and data.

Generally, there was agreement with the proposal. Of those who disagreed and provided comments, the quarterly release of data would continue to meet their needs.

For ‘Female genital mutilation’, NHS England will go ahead with the proposal from February 2025 for the quarter 2, 2024 to 2025 report onward, to publish data each quarter but stop producing the written report and Excel files. The annual report will remain unchanged.

Sexual and reproductive health: annual update

For ‘Sexual and reproductive health: annual update’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to review the publication and that lesser-used indicators could be discontinued.

More information was requested on which indicators are ‘lesser used’.

DHSC will undertake further consultation on ‘Sexual and reproductive health: annual update’ with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of sexual and reproductive health profiles. The aim is to start from December 2024.

Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales

For ‘Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to:

reduce the frequency of this publication from annual to biennial
no longer be published as a statistical bulletin and be released as a dataset only

Comments were a mix of:

general disagreement with reducing frequency of statistics as a whole
the importance of monitoring for local areas with higher levels of unexplained mortality
disagreement that the reducing rate trend is continuing

For now, ONS will continue to produce ‘Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales’ as an annual publication. However, the presentation of data and results may change as a result of ONS’s wider restructure of child health statistics.

Other publications

The following outputs did not have a specific proposal in the consultation and did not receive any specific feedback so will continue to be published going forward with no changes:

‘Abortion statistics for England and Wales’, produced by DHSC
‘Baby names in England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Births by parents’ country of birth, England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Childhood vaccination coverage statistics, England’, produced by NHS England
‘Conceptions in England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Health visitor services delivery metrics’, produced by DHSC. However, the source is expected change to CSDS at some date in the future, subject to data quality
‘Maternity services monthly statistics’, produced by NHS England
‘NCARDRS congenital anomaly statistics: annual data’, produced by NHS England
‘NHS maternity statistics, England’, produced by NHS England
‘Quarterly conceptions of women under 18 years, England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in children of school age’ (monthly and annual), produced by UKHSA
‘Sexual and reproductive health services, England (contraception)’, produced by NHS England

Question 11

4.  COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations

Accepted Answer

Broader context for these products

The original consultation section was limited to just COVID-19 and influenza infection and vaccination. Consultation responses focused on those questions and most actions outlined here relate to those topics. However, we are aware of user interest in understanding the landscape on a wider range of infectious diseases and risks as well as important statistics on immunisation programmes intended to mitigate those diseases or risks. With the aim of helping users to understand the broader landscape of related statistics publications, we considered this broader scope in our response. While we do not make specific proposals on any individual products outside the original scope, our response sets out some further steps to enable collaboration between statistical producer organisations with products in this theme area, and steps to provide users with a more coherent overview of available products on infectious diseases and vaccinations.

UKHSA has an ongoing review of statistical publications, designed to improve the trustworthiness, quality and value of the publication. Improvements made as part of this process include improvements in processing of data through reproducible analytical pipelines, greater accessibility of written publications and datasets and improved adherence to the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Contextual information

Since the launch of the consultation, the UKHSA Data Product Development division has made improvements to the UKHSA data dashboard Analytical Profile Index which will result in a better user experience. This is part of the continuous work to review and improve the dashboard functionality.

The UKHSA Data Product Development division and UK nations regularly collaborate to identify opportunities to provide users with consolidated data and reporting for the UK. They are doing a discovery project across the 4 nations, with a view to expanding the UKHSA data dashboard to include UK-wide data (currently it is just England). We expect this project to run until January 2025.

The Winter COVID Infection Study ran through the winter and the final official statistics publications were published in May 2024.

As part of continuous cycle of reviewing and improving their statistics products, UKHSA is testing alternative ways of presenting its publications. An example of this is including the monthly ‘Healthcare-associated infections’ (HCAI) data sets as visualisations on the UKHSA data dashboard.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Coronavirus as recorded in primary care, produced by NHS England
National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports, produced by UKHSA
Seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in frontline healthcare workers, produced by UKHSA
UKHSA data dashboard produced by UKHSA (this has replaced the UK coronavirus dashboard)

Future of statistical products in this area

As outlined above, we are keen to provide users with a clearer thematic view of products across the broader landscape of infectious disease and immunisation statistics. Most products in this area are produced by UKHSA and are already summarised on the Statistics at UKHSA page.

In addition, NHS England also produces a range of statistics specifically related to vaccination programmes covering COVID-19, influenza, mpox, polio and routine childhood vaccinations. These products are complementary and together they provide an overview of this wider scope.

In this response we are not proposing changes to any of the specific products, but in a broader context we will continue to build on collaborative work between organisations to identify scope to summarise this landscape more generally for the benefit of users, and to identify areas where it is helpful to cross-refer or to explain how one product relates to another.

The changes we have outlined address feedback we have had on the clarity of the commentary and methodology notes. We have noted the feedback on the UKHSA data dashboard and are pleased to note that work is already underway to address the majority.

The only proposal to discontinue a publication was on ‘Coronavirus as recorded in primary care’, which is currently paused. We did not receive substantial feedback in opposition to this proposal, so UKHSA is continuing with the plan to discontinue this.

Coronavirus as recorded in primary care

For ‘Coronavirus as recorded in primary care’, there was a proposal to formally discontinue this publication.

NHS England will continue with the proposal to discontinue the ‘Coronavirus as recorded in primary care’ report.

The publication included data on patients with a positive COVID test, a clinical diagnosis of COVID or where COVID was suspected, where this was recorded in primary care. As COVID is now managed like other respiratory infections and testing and diagnosis is no longer taking place routinely at GP practices, information on this is no longer relevant.

UKHSA continues to publish data on COVID cases and COVID vaccinations in its ‘National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports’.

Other publications

The following publications had no proposal in the consultation and will continue as planned:

‘National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports’, produced by UKHSA
‘Seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in frontline healthcare workers’, produced by UKHSA
‘UKHSA data dashboard’ (soft launch), produced by UKHSA

Cross-publication proposal to refine methodology notes and background information

Publication and output owners will continue to review and refine publicly available methodology notes and useful background information and ensure they are linked to or included in future releases.

Specific actions are:

to expand the ‘National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports’ methodology note to include details on the how the data is collected
for seasonal reports, such as ‘Seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in frontline healthcare workers’, to include in the publication a clear explanation on when in the year they are published

Having detailed methodologies available increases the trustworthiness of releases by increasing transparency of associated processes, limitations and caveats. Including useful background information, as well as when and where outputs are published, helps users to access the latest information and plan for future releases. Presenting methodologies more readily allows scrutiny of the release and could lead to improvements in quality. Providing detailed methodologies will also increase the value of releases as they provide vital information relating to limitations, thus providing users with all the information they need when using releases to make decisions.

Cross-publication proposal to make data available at the lowest geography possible

Publication and outputs owners will continue to make data available at the lowest geography possible while minimising risk of disclosive data. The UKHSA Data Product Development division will take steps to promote its data offer directly to local authorities to ensure that they are aware of the data that is available to them for operational purposes.

Greater spatial resolution will increase the value of data as it provides users with more granular information for their own analysis or decision making. Additional aggregation data where appropriate to avoid disclosure will increase the trustworthiness of the data. Aggregating due to methodological reasons will improve the quality of the final output.

Question 12

5.  Disability, learning disability and autism

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

This section covers statistics on disability and outcomes for disabled people, learning disability and autism. Data on disability is produced across government. However, the consultation only covered those produced by NHS England, DHSC and ONS.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Feedback on this topic included requests for more data. Some of the data requested is available in existing publications. For example, the below publications may also be of interest to statistics users on this topic area:

Future of statistical products in this area

Autism statistics

For ‘Autism statistics’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

There are no plans for changes to ‘Autism statistics’.

Learning disability profiles

For ‘Learning disability profiles’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal for this to be formally discontinued.

The last update to indicators owned by the profile was made in March 2021. Previously indicators were updated frequently during the year as new source data was available.

Generally, respondents disagreed with this proposal.

Having reviewed the feedback, further work to understand user need in more detail is required to inform decisions regarding the future of the ‘Learning disability profiles’.

Learning disability services monthly statistics

For ‘Learning disability services monthly statistics’, produced by NHS England, there was no specific proposal in the consultation.

NHS England will include feedback from the consultation in its publication planning and development process for the ‘Learning disability services monthly statistics’. As part of this process, NHS England reviews feedback from stakeholders to help inform future development.

Outcomes for disabled people in the UK

For ‘Outcomes for disabled people in the UK’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal that this publication is currently paused while methods, data sources and efficiency are reviewed and to move to biennial following conclusion of this review. This publication was last produced in 2022.

Some respondents disagreed with this proposal. Analysis of the text responses showed a clear user requirement for these statistics, with many responses indicating a preference for:

more regular publication
more granular geographical breakdowns
more comprehensive population coverage

The ‘Annual population survey’ is a major source of information for ‘Outcomes for disabled people in the UK’ but it is currently undergoing transformation. Therefore, ONS will pause the publication until the required development work, which will also include exploration of alternate administrative data sources, has been completed. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.

Many of the data sources used to produce previous iterations of this release are publicly available from the UK Data Service: 

Question 13

6.  Elective activity

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

The proposals set out in the consultation on elective data sets relate to cases where we felt there is scope for simplification and rationalisation to reduce both the complexity of the information landscape and the data collection burden placed on the NHS. They are cases where information currently collected in aggregate returns and published as official statistics operate alongside one or more similar products. Many of those alternative products offer the benefit of being record-level data sets with the potential for much richer and more flexible analysis.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Breast screening programme, England’ and ‘Cervical screening programme, England’

For ‘Breast screening programme, England’ and ‘Cervical screening programme, England’ produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

While there are no changes currently planned for ‘Breast screening programme, England’ and ‘Cervical screening programme, England’ statistics, ongoing work to bring legacy NHS Digital and NHS England publications together following the merger may lead to planned changes at a later date. If these are significant, NHS England will consider the appropriate way to engage with users.

Cancelled elective operations

For ‘Cancelled elective operations’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to stop this publication and alternatively publish information on cancelled operations derived from the ‘Theatres data collection’.

A number of respondents said they would only be supportive if the new source provided the same range of information.

NHS England does not intend to make the change to the data source for ‘Cancelled elective operations’ in the near future as further feasibility and development work is required, including to the completeness and quality of data from the alternative source and linkage to the ‘Hospital episode statistics’ to derive information on time to readmission.

Consultant-led outpatient referrals

For ‘Consultant-led outpatient referrals’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to stop this publication.

A small number of respondents expressed some concern about this proposal, highlighting the need for consistent information on elective demand.

NHS England intends to discontinue ‘Consultant-led outpatient referrals’ permanently. The publication has been paused since May 2024.

Alternative data sources on elective demand are available. Users can find information on:

patients starting a wait for consultant-led treatment available as part of the monthly and weekly ‘Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times’ publications
referrals made through the e-Referrals Service
the number of outpatient first attendances that occur each month - these are published via the Hospital episode statistics, which can be used to derive numbers broken down by referral source

Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times

For ‘Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to stop this product once the Waiting list minimum data set is of sufficient coverage and quality for the range of information collected through the aggregate ‘Referral to treatment’ monthly return to be derived from this.

Some respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed, citing concerns about the current quality of the ‘Waiting list minimum data set’ information, the need for at least the same range of data to be available with at least the same frequency, and for some double running to occur.

NHS England has started to make some information available from the ‘Waiting list minimum data set’ alongside the official statistics. NHS England has a programme of work to identify data quality issues and, through regional teams, to support providers to address them.

NHS England does not currently have a timetable in mind for the switchover from ‘Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times’ to the ‘Waiting list minimum data set’, although it remains the longer-term intention to make this transition. This is dependent on the rate of progress with which data quality can be improved and making sure arrangements are in place for an orderly transition. NHS England will revisit the issue and consult again, if necessary, in due course.

Diagnostic imaging dataset

For ‘Diagnostic imaging dataset’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

The responses included a request for data on whether the procedure led to a diagnosis and the type of diagnosis.

NHS England will consider the request for data on whether the procedure led to a diagnosis and the type of diagnosis, when the next set of changes to the ‘Diagnostic imaging dataset’ are developed.

Diagnostics waiting times and activity data

For ‘Diagnostics waiting times and activity data’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

A number of respondents flagged the importance of this publication for monitoring services. There were 2 main suggestions for change:

greater granularity for adult and paediatric waits and different audiology tests
the inclusion of more respiratory tests

NHS England will consider the requests for greater granularity for adult and paediatric waits and different audiology tests, and inclusion of more respiratory tests, when the next set of changes to the ‘Diagnostics waiting times and activity data’ are developed and consult separately on the proposals.

Direct-access audiology waiting times

For ‘Direct access audiology waiting times’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to stop this publication.

A small number of respondents expressed some concern about this proposal, highlighting the importance of information on audiology waits, including in monitoring risk to patients.

In light of the consultation responses, NHS England intends to discontinue ‘Direct access audiology waiting times’ permanently. The publication has been paused since March 2020.

A range of alternative sources of information on audiology waits are available for:

information on patients waiting for community audiology services, as part of the Community health services waiting lists publication
information on waiting times for audiology diagnostics, as part of the Diagnostic waiting times and activity publication
information from the Hospital episode statistics on referral date and first outpatient attendance date; and on decision to admit date and admission date can be used to derive outpatient and inpatient waits for patients, in particular specialties, with particular diagnoses or undergoing particular procedures

Provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for admitted patient care, outpatient and accident and emergency data

For ‘Provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for admitted patient care, outpatient and accident and emergency data’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to reduce frequency from monthly to quarterly.

At this stage, there are no immediate plans for changes to ‘Provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for admitted patient care, outpatient and accident and emergency data’ due to the potential impact to users.

Other publications

There were no proposals in the consultation and there are currently no planned changes to the following publications:

‘Hospital admitted patient care activity’, produced by NHS England
‘Hospital outpatient activity’, produced by NHS England
‘Mixed sex accommodation breaches’, produced by NHS England

Question 14

7.  End of life care

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Most of the available end of life care statistics are gathered from death certificates, returns from primary care or from hospital admissions data and are collated into the ‘Palliative and end of life care profiles’ published by DHSC. The discontinued ‘National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England’ formerly carried out by ONS is still referenced. The consultation proposed no changes.

The main themes expressed in the consultation responses include:

the need for more data on inequalities
more intelligence to monitor quality of end of life care services
intelligence on condition-specific needs at end of life
more detail on hospital and community service integration

The detailed consultation responses are being reviewed by the UKHSSG for End of Life Care, for prioritisation and resourcing.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Other products in this area include:

National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England (discontinued), produced by ONS

Future of statistical products in this area

Palliative and end of life care factsheets (‘Place of death’, ‘Care homes’, and ‘Patterns of care’ factsheets)

For the Palliative and end of life care factsheets (‘Place of death’, ‘Care homes’, and ‘Patterns of care’), there was no proposal in the consultation.

For the ‘Patterns of care factsheet’, related to 4 major conditions (cancer, dementia, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and respiratory disease), DHSC will continue annual updates.

For the ‘Place of death factsheet’, DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing revised factsheets for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.

For the ‘Care homes factsheet’, DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing a new expanded factsheet for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.

Palliative and end of life care profiles

For the ‘Palliative and end of life care profiles’, there was no proposal in the consultation.

DHSC will continue annual updates of ‘Palliative and end of life care profiles’ including indicators describing place of death, deaths in care homes of temporary residents, emergency hospital admissions near end of life and the care home bed rate.

National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England (discontinued)

For ‘National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England’, produced by ONS, there was no proposal in the consultation as this is a discontinued product.

Some respondents requested that the survey be reinstated.

ONS has no current plans to reinstate ‘National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England’.

Question 15

8.  Health inequalities

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

There are numerous tools and ad hoc publications produced by DHSC, ONS and NHS England with health inequalities as the focus. While sociodemographic breakdowns (and therefore the potential for assessing health inequalities) are present in many health statistics publications, the consultation focused on a limited list of publications. The consultation explored options such as stopping publications, merging statistical products or reducing their frequency.

Responses for this topic expressed a general consensus about the need to rationalise disability statistics on health inequalities. Users found the current landscape difficult to navigate. Several of the changes outlined below respond to this feedback. Furthermore, a substantial number of the respondents expressed the value of granular data and a general sentiment about the need of more up-to-date data. Work is underway to best meet the expressed needs.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Note: the geography can vary depending on availability of suitable data from devolved governments at time of release.

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’

For ‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ produced by ONS, there was a proposal to merge the 3 publications together, and move frequency of output to biennial.

Respondents generally expressed the need for more frequent reporting.

‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’, and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025. Subject to population data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.

COVID-19 health inequalities monitoring for England (CHIME) tool

For the ‘COVID-19 health inequalities monitoring for England (CHIME) tool’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to formally stop the tool, with some indicators that continue to be relevant moving to other tools, including the Health inequalities dashboard.

The tool brings together data relating to inequalities in the impacts of COVID-19 for factors such as mortality rates, hospital admissions, confirmed cases, vaccinations and life expectancy.

Updates to the tool are currently paused and the consultation proposed that this release was discontinued given its decreased relevance and the availability of ongoing indicators elsewhere.

DHSC intends to formally stop updating the ‘COVID-19 health inequalities monitoring for England (CHIME) tool’ and expects to archive the tool and indicator content in 2025. DHSC will signpost users to indicators that remain active in other products.

‘Health inequalities dashboard’ and ‘Segment tool’

For the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ and ‘Segment tool’ produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to merge these dashboards together to rationalise the number of inequality tools produced by DHSC and help users effectively navigate between the sources of data.

There was strong support for the proposal to merge the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ and ‘Segment tool’.

DHSC is exploring the best way to implement merging the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ with the ‘Segment tool’.

‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ’Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’

For ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to merge these outputs to rationalise the number of publications. The consultation also proposed a consolidated biennial publication for life expectancy and health state life expectancy.

There was strong support for merging the publications and an overwhelming disagreement for moving to biennial release.

ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.

ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future-proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.

Spotlight

For ‘Spotlight’, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation.

There was limited feedback for this output. Responses indicated the tool’s utility and the need for sub-national data.

DHSC is currently exploring ways to update ‘Spotlight’, considering how best to meet the need for sub-national data, and how to integrate the tool with other outputs on health inequalities.

Trend in life expectancy by National Statistics socioeconomic classification, England and Wales

For ‘Trend in life expectancy by National Statistics socioeconomic classification, England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation.

There was limited evidence that these statistics are being used to inform policy and the limited number of responses suggests their priority against other breakdowns is lower.

Currently, future changes to ‘Trend in life expectancy by National Statistics socioeconomic classification, England and Wales’ are still being discussed.

Question 16

9.  Major conditions

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

This section considers responses to the major conditions section, which featured 9 statistical outputs related to the 6 conditions covered in the major condition’s strategy.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Cardiovascular disease prevention audit (CVDPREVENT)

For ‘CVDPREVENT’, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal in the consultation.

Feedback from respondents was limited. Comments were received on the usefulness and range of the audit data, as well as the value of consolidation with other products.

There are no proposals to make changes for ‘CVDPREVENT’ based on the feedback. However, DHSC will bring a subset of indicators from ‘CVDPREVENT’ into the ‘CVD profile’.

CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles

For ‘CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal that these would be reviewed and lesser used indicators could be discontinued.

Feedback from respondents suggested that the profiles are used to inform needs assessments, planning and commissioning, including understanding differences between areas and health inequalities. While some respondents agreed with the proposal to discontinue lesser-used indicators, most asked that further consultation was carried out regarding the specific indicators to be removed.

DHSC will revisit the content of the ‘CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles’. The previous collection covering CVD and diabetes has already been separated into individual profiles, with a subset of diabetes and kidney disease indicators included in the CVD profile as high-risk conditions for CVD, and additional diabetes indicators in a topic-specific profile.

Further work to understand user need is required for the ‘Respiratory disease’ profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.

CVD prevention packs

For ‘CVD prevention packs’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal that this would be reviewed and lesser used indicators could be discontinued.

Comments on the ‘CVD prevention packs’ were similar to those for the ‘CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles’. Several respondents commented on the value of consolidating CVD outputs into a single pack or interactive product.

At present, the ‘CVD prevention packs’ have not been updated due to delays in the development of prevalence estimates for high-risk conditions for CVD and broader resource constraints. Work is on-going to develop the different prevalence estimates.

Further work to understand user need is required for the ‘Respiratory disease’ profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.

Dementia surveillance factsheet

For the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to resume quarterly publication rather than monthly, with monthly data available in Fingertips.

The majority of the respondents agreed with the proposals. Respondents were pleased with the outputs and that they exist.

The redevelopment of the production process for the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ is now complete. Although respondents agreed with the proposal to produce the factsheet quarterly, as the production process is now more streamlined, DHSC will continue publishing the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ on a monthly basis. However, this proposal may be reconsidered in the future.

Monthly publishing of the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ will continue.

DHSC will consult on potential integration of indicators from the ‘Dementia new indicators factsheet’ into the ‘Dementia profile’ or the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ in the future.

Further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the ‘Dementia profile’.

Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England

For ‘Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England’, produced by ONS and DHSC, there was a proposal that ONS and DHSC are exploring the feasibility of producing more regular statistics on mortality rates for a range of conditions across socio-economic characteristics. ONS had recently published a one-off article to inform the major conditions strategy, presenting mortality rates for a range of conditions across socio-economic characteristics. Additionally, it was proposed that ONS and DHSC are exploring the possibility of increasing the regularity of these statistics in future and extending the analysis, pending availability of resources.

Responses were generally supportive, particularly with respect to having more regular outputs and small-area estimates (perhaps further broken down by ethnicity and other sociodemographic characteristics if possible).

ONS will explore options for funding and resourcing the production of more up-to-date and disaggregated statistics on ‘Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England’, subject to statistical quality considerations and acknowledging that characteristics recorded in Census 2021 become increasingly outdated over time.

Musculoskeletal health: local profiles

For ‘Musculoskeletal health: local profiles’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal that this will be reviewed, and lesser-used indicators could be discontinued.

Most comments on the local profiles requested further information on the review before they felt they could answer.

Further work to understand user need is required for ‘Musculoskeletal health: local profiles’. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England

For ’Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England’, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal in the consultation as it had already been paused prior to the consultation beginning, but views were welcomed on the future of this report.

A few comments expressed a wish for the report to be restarted.

While the first release of the report received favourable feedback, there is insufficient resource available to update it and develop new sections. A lot of the information in the report is available from other published sources which can still be used without it being consolidated into one central report on musculoskeletal health and disparities.

The ‘Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England’ report will remain paused until there are sufficient resources available to provide an update.

NHS Health Check

For the ‘NHS Health Check’ profile, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal in the consultation.

Several respondents noted using the profile data for needs assessment, benchmarking and comparison. Respondents highlighted there would be benefit in expanding the data collection to include, for example, demographic breakdowns and information on outcomes following the health check.

There is no proposal to change the ‘NHS Health Check’ profile at this time. However, DHSC will explore the issues raised by respondents, with a view to making further data available in future.

Respiratory disease

For the ‘Respiratory disease’ profile (previously known as ‘Interactive health atlas of lung conditions in England (INHALE)’), produced by DHSC, there was a proposal that this will be reviewed and lesser-used indicators could be discontinued.

The majority of the respondents requested further information on the review and for clarification of what were ‘lesser used indicators’ before they felt they could answer. Most respondents commented that the review should consult users.

Further work to understand user need is required for the ‘Respiratory disease’ profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.

Question 17

10.  Mental health

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

The publications included in the consultation for mental health focused on products produced by either NHS England or DHSC. In particular, direct questions focused on products produced from the Mental health services dataset (MHSDS), although the overarching theme was to consolidate and streamline products where possible across both NHS England and DHSC.

The MHSDS has recently been updated from MHSDS version 5 to MHSDS version 6 which went live in April 2024. This update included additions and deletions of tables, new fields or changes to existing fields. The data quality and coverage of the MHSDS dataset has improved in recent years due to a dedicated team focused on improving data quality and coverage of the MHSDS. The MHSDS was badged as official statistics rather than experimental earlier this year as a result.

Over recent years there has been a trend to increase the number of measures, breakdowns and outputs for the MHSDS monthly publication which then brings into question how useful the annual publications are in their current form and whether these now need to change.

The merger of NHS Digital and NHS England has led to a reduction in analytical resource for mental health within NHS England and therefore a need to consolidate and streamline publications.

The 2021 public health system reform resulted in the move of public health analytical teams from Public Health England (PHE) to DHSC, leading to new ways of working for the statistics producers. Furthermore, wider Civil Service reform led to reduction of analytical resource. Therefore, consolidation and streamlining of DHSC publications will reflect these changes to ensure long-term sustainability of the statistical products.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Review of all statistical products on mental health produced by NHS England

For all statistical products on mental health produced by NHS England there was a proposal to review these with a view to reduce the quantity of data provided and focus on current national priorities only.

Responses predominantly supported the proposal to review the mental health products produced by NHS England - in particular, to align measures within publications to current initiatives and policy.

For the review of all products on mental health produced by NHS England, NHS England will engage further with users ahead of any changes.

The below plans reflect the feedback so far and propose further engagement with users ahead of any changes. NHS England will review feedback to the consultation so far alongside further engagement work.

NHS England will:

review measures and updates:
- user engagement across different sectors to understand the usage of published measures and any requirements for new measures which will enhance knowledge of mental health pathways
- engagement on measures to stop
- removal of measures that have limited usage
- development of any agreed new measures
review types of breakdowns:
- user engagement across different sectors to understand which different types of measures are useful - for example, geographical breakdowns, demographic breakdowns, rolling quarterly
- engagement on any types of breakdowns to stop
- removal of any breakdowns that have limited usage
- development of any new agreed breakdowns
review publication outputs:
- user engagement across different sectors to understand what products and tools users currently make use of, how products could be improved, any that can stop, and any new products for development
- engagement on products to stop
- removal of any products that have limited usage
- development of any agreed new products or changes to publications

The following timescales are proposed:

engagement activities to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

‘Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures’, ‘Mental health bulletin’ and ‘Mental health services monthly statistics’

For ‘Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures’ and ‘Mental health bulletin’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to:

discontinue these reports due to the continued development of the ‘Mental health services monthly statistics’, which now covers more content
depending on feedback, include changes to the monthly statistics to add more measures such as rolling 12-month data points to reduce the need for an annual publication

While feedback supported the rationale to streamline, it is evident that further consultation is needed to understand the value that is gained currently from the breadth of published measures and having separate annual outputs for the Mental Health Act and year-on-year changes of mental health so that, where possible, user needs continue to be met.

NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual publications (‘Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures’ and ‘Mental health bulletin’) and the ‘Mental health services monthly statistics’ publication and engage with users to better understand:

which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful
which measures, breakdowns and outputs can be updated or removed
whether there are any new requirements

NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.

The below plans reflect the feedback so far and propose further engagement with users ahead of any changes. NHS England will review the feedback to the consultation so far alongside further engagement work.

For the ‘Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures’ publication and ‘Mental health bulletin’ annual report, NHS England will review the annual publications and:

map where there is duplication between the annual publication and the monthly publication, and the benefits of either in relation to the Mental Health Act and annual trends
engage with users to understand, in relation to the Mental Health Act, what measures, breakdowns and outputs within the annual and monthly publications are useful, and what elements could be removed or improved
engage with users to understand any new requirements relating to the Mental Health Act or monitoring of annual trend data
develop a plan for publication of Mental Health Act data and annual trend data going forward
implement agreed plan

The following timescales are proposed:

engagement activities to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

Out of area placements in mental health services

For ‘Out of area placements in mental health services’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to change the data sources to mental health services data set to reduce burden on data providers.

The bespoke collection for ‘Out of area placements in mental health services’ was an interim data collection put in place until the data quality of out of area placements data within the MHSDS was of sufficient quality; the bespoke collection was retired at the end of March 2024.

From April 2024 onwards out of area placements are solely collected via the MHSDS.

To allow for comparisons with the bespoke collection, out of area placements started being reported from the MHSDS from April 2023. This change was implemented to reduce the burden on data submitters, so that they did not need to submit out of area placements to 2 different data collections.

Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness

For ‘Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to change the data source to primary care data to reduce burden on data providers.

‘Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness’ was collected by a bespoke data collection using the Strategic Data Collection Service. This bespoke collection was retired at the end of March 2024.

From April 2024, ‘Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness’ is collected directly from general practices via the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES). The first quarterly publication from the new collection covered quarter 1 (April to June 2024) and was published in September 2024.

DHSC mental health products

There was a proposal to consolidate and streamline mental health publications produced by DHSC, for the following products:

Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing profile
Children living with parents in emotional distress
Mental health and wellbeing JSNA profile
Perinatal mental health profile
Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)
Severe mental illness (SMI) profile
Suicide prevention profile

Respondents predominantly stated that the above DHSC products should be retained in terms of detail and topic areas coverage. The responses generally supported the need for the review of products’ content and streamlining. The feedback outlined that changes should be carried out through further engagement with the end users. The responses were also supportive that product reviews and streamlining will reduce duplication and improve end user experience.

The below plans reflect consultation responses received so far, with further user engagement to be carried out as appropriate.

1. ‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile

‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicator content and the presentation of geographical boundaries and undertake end user engagement.

DHSC will review the profile content and presentation, including:

indicator review and updates:
- remove indicators where data source or methodology changed
- identify replacement indicators as appropriate and based on user needs
- remove duplicate indicators
- remove indicators where user need is less clear
- investigate addition of indicators that enhance understanding of the care pathway
geographical boundaries review and updates:
- remove multiple boundary versions for the same geographies
- map or update indicator for the latest boundary versions

DHSC will streamline profile updates through:

combining profile together with the ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile to reduce duplication where there is crossover between profiles, make effective use of resources and improve user experience
development of profile update schedule and move to official statistics status

DHSC will undertake end user engagement to support review and streamlining of profile.

The following timescales are proposed:

further user engagement in relation to profile’s content and publication format to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

2. Children living with parents in emotional distress

The consultation responses highlighted that ‘Children living with parents in emotional distress’ is an important publication. However, because of changes in data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic and some evidence on changing characteristics of the study cohort, further assessment is required before actions can be proposed.

DHSC will review ‘Children living with parents in emotional distress’ to assess the underlying methodology and ongoing resourcing of annual updates across DHSC and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as this is a joint publication.

The proposed timeline for the assessment to be carried out is by winter 2024 to 2025.

3. Mental health and wellbeing JSNA profile

The ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile provides an overview of the other 5 DHSC-owned profiles. It presented a summary in one place where the user could then move to the topic-specific profile if more detail was required.

Review and streamlining of other DHSC mental health profiles will ensure that content of the JSNA profile is included within the revised structures through an improved focus on perinatal, children and young people and adults’ mental health. It will also offer a more straightforward and easily navigated structure that will reduce the requirements for a 2-tier approach.

The proposal is to remove the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile as indicators and topic content are covered by the remaining mental profiles.

The exception to this process is the wellbeing topic, that for adults is included in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile only. The combined and revised ‘Perinatal and children and young people mental health’ profile will cover wellbeing, and DHSC will add the wellbeing topic in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile to the new ‘Adult mental health’ profile (and follow the outlined review process).

This approach will reduce duplication, improve end user experience and will improve resourcing for profiles updates.

Planned implementation date:

further user engagement in relation to profile’s content and publication format review to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

4. Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)

‘Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)’ is a joint publication with NHS England as part of the ‘Excess under 75 mortality rates in adults with serious mental illness’ statistical series. NHS England remains the indicators’ production organisation.

For ‘Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)’, DHSC will continue publishing indicators on premature and excess premature mortality, and pilot moving analysis reports on indicators used and interpretation to a ‘statistical commentary’ format. DHSC will review the methodology for the indicators with input from NHS England.

For ‘Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)’:

indicators on premature and excess premature mortality will continue to be published in the DHSC ‘Mental health profile’ and will align with the NHS England publication schedule on ‘Excess under 75 mortality rates in adults with serious mental illness’ statistics; premature mortality indicators are only published by DHSC
GOV.UK research and analysis reports on indicators’ use and interpretation will move to a ‘statistical commentary’ format to improve accessibility, end user experience and long-term sustainability; we will pilot this approach with conditions specific briefings which will complete the series of reports on premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness
NHS England will publish future ‘statistical commentary’ as appropriate and dependent on data updates
conduct review of methodology for the indicators to ensure that statistics are fit for purpose and comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics

Planned implementation date:

annual update of indicators to continue
pilot the use of ‘statistical commentary’ format with conditions specific briefings by March 2025
plan and start methodology review process in late 2025

5. ‘Severe mental illness’ (SMI) profile and ‘Common mental health disorders’ (CMHD) profile

Note: the CMHD profile was not covered by the consultation and is included in the action plan for completeness in light of the proposal to streamline DHSC mental health profiles processes and updates.

The SMI profile and CMHD profile will merge. DHSC will review indicator content and geographical boundaries and will undertake end user engagement.

DHSC will review the profile content and presentation, including:

indicator review and updates:
- remove indicators where data source or methodology changed
- identify replacement indicators as appropriate and based on user needs
- remove duplicate indicators
- remove indicators where user need is less clear
- investigate addition of indicators that enhance understanding of the care pathway
geographical boundaries review and updates:
- remove multiple boundary versions for the same geographies
- map or update indicator for the latest boundary versions

DHSC will streamline profile updates through:

combining profile together with the CMHD profile to reduce duplication where there is crossover between profiles, make effective use of resources and improve user experience
development of profile update schedule and move to official statistics status

DHSC will undertake end user engagement to support review and streamlining of profile.

The following timelines are proposed:

further user engagement in relation to profile’s content and publication format review to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

6. ‘Suicide prevention’ profile

For the ‘Suicide prevention’ profile, DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries to reduce duplication.

DHSC will review the profile content and presentation, including:

indicator review and updates:
- remove indicators where data source or methodology changed
- identify replacement indicators as appropriate and based on user needs
- remove duplicate indicators
- remove indicators where user need is less clear
- investigate addition of indicators that enhance understanding of the care pathway
geographical boundaries review and updates:
- remove multiple boundary versions for the same geographies
- map or update indicator for the latest boundary versions

DHSC will streamline profile updates through the development of a profile update schedule as part of wider DHSC ‘Mental health profiles’ updates.

The following timelines are proposed:

further user engagement in relation to profile’s content review to be carried out by winter 2024 to 2025
plans for implementation of changes to be finalised by spring 2025
timescale for implementation of changes to be confirmed

Other publications

The following publications had no proposals for consideration at the time of the user consultation. NHS England will discuss any future changes:

‘Adult psychiatric morbidity survey’, produced by NHS England
‘Excess under 75 mortality rates in adults with serious mental illness’, produced by NHS England
‘Mental health of children and young people in England’, produced by NHS England
‘NHS talking therapies monthly statistics including employment advisors’, produced by NHS England
‘Psychological therapies, annual report on the use of IAPT services’, produced by NHS England

Question 18

11.  Mortality

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Mortality outputs are produced by ONS, DHSC, UKHSA and NHS England. In total, 21 mortality outputs were included in the consultation. This section outlines the final proposed changes to these outputs following analysis of the consultation responses that were received.

Recurring themes in feedback across multiple publications were:

some users find the process of finding mortality statistics difficult
further breakdowns of mortality data would be helpful - for example, more local authority and sub-local authority data
more mortality data would be helpful - for example, mortality by protected characteristics
there is a need for better comparability and consistency of mortality data across UK countries

The 4 organisations whose statistics are in scope of this action plan will work together to produce shared signposting text, detailing which statistics are produced by which organisations, and how they compare with other publications. Organisations will add these to releases to improve user understanding of what statistics each organisation produces and how they compare.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK

For ‘Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK’, produced by ONS, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation and little feedback was provided by respondents.

However, ONS is proposing for this output to be published as a headline only release going forward. A headline only release was successfully implemented for the Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK: registered in 2022 release that was published in April.

ONS will publish ‘Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK’ as a headline only release going forward.

For ‘Climate-related mortality, England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to develop the methodology to understand causes of death and broader health implications associated with extreme heat and extreme cold. This is part of a 4-year development project with global partners to improve statistics on climate and health, supported by the Wellcome Trust.

All responses were supportive of this proposal.

ONS is broadening the ‘Climate-related mortality, England and Wales’ publication to extend the time period to 2023 and to consider other causes of death (for example, cardiovascular, respiratory) and demographic characteristics (for example, age, sex, deprivation). ONS will then consider developments for reporting heat and cold-related morbidity using hospital admissions data.

Death registration statistics, produced by ONS

In the consultation, ONS proposed the following changes to its death registration statistics:

‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ - proposal to remove additional 21st century mortality data tables from the England and Wales output, as this is published elsewhere via the Nomis service
‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ - no specific proposal
‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’ - no specific proposal

The feedback received on the proposal to remove additional 21st century tables was positive, and ONS will implement this in the next release.

ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’.

There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn.

This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the Deaths registered in England and Wales: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.

Deaths of care home residents, England and Wales

For ‘Deaths of care home residents, England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to cease publication of these official statistics in development.

Most respondents disagreed with this proposal. Analysis of the text responses showed a clear user requirement for these statistics.

ONS will pause publication of ‘Deaths of care home residents, England and Wales’ until the required development work is completed. Once complete, ONS will continue to publish these statistics regularly. ONS will continue to publish statistics on deaths in care homes as part of the Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales release.

Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales

For ‘Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to cease publication of these official statistics in development.

Most respondents disagreed with this proposal. Analysis of the text responses showed a clear user requirement for these statistics.

ONS will continue to publish ‘Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales’, but will undertake an improvement programme to provide more robust statistics to help better meet user needs.

‘Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK’ and ‘Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages’

For ‘Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK’ and ‘Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to merge the 2 outputs to streamline the number of publications.

The feedback received was positive on this proposal and this will therefore be implemented for the next release.

ONS will implement the merge for outputs ‘Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK’ and ‘Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages’ for the next release.

Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales

For ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to reduce this output to data only, to streamline the publication.

The feedback received was not supportive of this approach with users valuing the commentary provided.

ONS will initially keep ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’ as a headline only release. In the longer term, ONS will explore alternative ways of presenting this output, such as dashboards.

Excess mortality in England and English regions

For ‘Excess mortality in England and English regions’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to update DHSC’s existing modelling approach. At the time of the consultation, excess mortality methods were subject to review.

Of the responses to this proposal, almost all were supportive.

ONS, together with a cross-government technical working group, has now completed its review of excess mortality methods.

ONS introduced changes to its methodology in February 2024, and in order to achieve broad alignment with the ONS method, DHSC implemented changes at the same time, putting in place the proposals noted in the consultation.

For ‘Excess mortality in England and English regions’, the baseline period is now based on trends in mortality rates in the most recent 5 years, rather than the 5 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. DHSC is now also presenting estimates by month, rather than week, in the new, post-pandemic version of its excess mortality report.

Heat mortality monitoring report

For the ‘Heat mortality monitoring report’, produced by UKHSA, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation and little feedback was provided by respondents.

Data in UKHSA’s latest annual ‘Heat mortality monitoring report’ is broken down by region, age group and gender.

UKHSA is exploring the implementation of additional geographical breakdowns in future ‘Heat mortality monitoring reports’, but due to the statistical uncertainty in estimating heat-associated deaths and the small numbers involved (fewer than 500 heat-associated deaths in each region in summer 2023), it is unlikely that UKHSA will be able to present data for a single year at local authority level.

Mortality profile

For the ‘Mortality profile’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to expand this output to incorporate some indicators currently reported in NHS England’s Compendium: mortality publication. This will increase the number of causes of death for which mortality rates are available at local authority level via DHSC’s Fingertips platform.

Of the responses to this proposal, all agreed that it would be helpful. One respondent raised a concern that the expansion of indicators may not include all they were currently using from the NHS England mortality compendium.

DHSC has already taken steps to increase the number of indicators included in its ‘Mortality profile’, increasing the number of causes of deaths for which trends in mortality rates are now available. In February 2024, the profile was expanded to include 18 new indicators, 14 of which had previously been reported in either NHS England’s ‘Compendium: mortality’ or DHSC’s Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool.

All indicators from the ‘Compendium: mortality’ were reviewed by DHSC. However, only those for which annual numbers of deaths were sufficiently large to allow meaningful mortality rates to be calculated for local authorities have been included in the ‘Mortality profile’.

Quarterly suicide death registrations in England

For ‘Quarterly suicide death registrations in England’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to streamline the publication.

The feedback received was not supportive of this approach with users valuing the commentary provided in this release.

ONS will publish ‘Quarterly suicide death registrations in England’ as a headline only release rather than data only.

This was successfully implemented for the Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2022 registrations and Quarter 1 (January to March) to Quarter 4 (October to December) 2023 provisional data release published in April 2024.

Winter mortality in England and Wales

For ‘Winter mortality in England and Wales’, produced by ONS, there was a proposal to undergo a review, with particular focus on methodology and timeliness of the statistics.

To enable this review to take place, this publication has been paused, which means the release covering the winter 2022 to 2023 containing provisional deaths and 2021 to 2022 using final deaths will not be published. A proposal on the future status on this output will be determined following this review and the outcome of the cross-government technical working group who are currently reviewing methods for excess deaths statistics.

Most respondents either ‘agreed’ or ‘neither agreed nor disagreed’.

ONS will complete a review of ‘Winter mortality in England and Wales’ and publish a proposal on the future of these statistics.

Other publications

The following outputs did not have a specific proposal in the consultation and did not receive any specific feedback so will continue to be published going forward with no changes:

‘Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Excess mortality during heat-periods’, produced by ONS
‘Suicides in England and Wales’, produced by ONS
‘Summary hospital-level mortality indicator (SHMI) - deaths associated with hospitalisation, England’, produced by NHS England
‘Weekly all-cause mortality surveillance’, produced by UKHSA

Question 19

12.  Obesity, physical activity and diet

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Obesity, physical activity and diet outputs are produced by DHSC and NHS England. In total, 7 obesity, physical activity and diet outputs were included in the consultation. This section outlines the planned changes to these outputs following analysis of the consultation responses that were received.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Changes in the weight status of children between the first and final years of primary school

For ‘Changes in the weight status of children between the first and final years of primary school’, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation.

No changes are planned for ‘Changes in the weight status of children between the first and final years of primary school’.

National Child Measurement Programme reports

For the ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’, produced by DHSC and NHS England, there was a proposal to update and publish the 3 outputs together in approximately November or December each year.

There is duplication of resource between NHS England and DHSC with both organisations producing similar outputs on the first release of a new year of NCMP data and there is an overlap of commentary. Additionally, the reports are published in different places which is confusing to users, with NHS England publishing a report on its website and DHSC publishing an interactive report on the Fingertips platform and a commentary on GOV.UK. There is also a timing difference of a few weeks between the reports.

The vast majority of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed.

The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows:

The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024.
The 2024 to 2025 reports will merge into one report. DHSC will publish the report in autumn 2025.

National Diet and Nutrition Survey

For the ‘National Diet and Nutrition Survey’, produced by DHSC, there was no specific proposal included in the consultation.

The ‘National Diet and Nutrition Survey’ is currently published every 4 years by DHSC but will move to an annual report which coincides with an increase in the sample size to deliver robust annual estimates. The first annual report is expected to be published in 2026. These changes were planned outside of this consultation.

‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’

For the ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to merge and consolidate content in the 2 outputs and expand them to include important indicators on diet as well.

There is a lot of duplication between the obesity and physical activity profiles with several indicators appearing in both. There are also some indicators which have not been updated for several years, with no plans to do so. There are also some existing indicators on diet which could be included in the merged profile.

The vast majority of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed.

The ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’ will merge and DHSC will consolidate the content to include important indicators on diet as well.

Prior to the merger, further work to understand user need is required. Once this has been carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front pages of the obesity and physical activity profiles.

Question 20

13.  Overarching health and social care outputs

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

This theme captures feedback on statistical outputs that look across the whole of the health and social care system, or multiple parts of it. This includes a range of outputs from DHSC, NHS England and ONS. Many of the proposals aimed to:

reduce duplication across outputs
streamline indicator sets
improve signposting to existing publications
in the case of surveys, improve response rates

Many respondents noted the value of overarching statistical outputs as a source of measures to inform population health outcomes at both local and national level. These collections facilitate local decision making and provide an understanding of local issues. The data are often used to inform local needs assessments, commissioning decisions and planning. The value of being able to benchmark performance was also highlighted. Respondents were keen to ensure that indicators continue to measure inequalities.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Other publications also included here are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Health Survey for England

For the ‘Health Survey for England’ report, produced by NHS England, there were proposals to change the survey mode from face-to-face to either online or a combination of online and telephone, and to change the frequency of the ‘Health Survey for England’ from annual to biennial (every other year).

The rationale for these proposals is that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in response rates and a reduction in the availability of fieldwork resource to deliver face-to-face surveys.

Fieldwork is underway for the 2024 ‘Health survey for England’, which NHS England will publish in 2025. Given the size of this survey and range of outputs, it is being reviewed and discussed separately. NHS England will publish the outcome as a standalone web page linked to this.

Health trends in England

In the consultation, we said that DHSC was exploring a new ‘Health trends in England’ product, which would bring together high-level public health trend data in one place in a dashboard-style product.

DHSC launched Health trends in England in May 2024 and continue to release updates on a monthly basis. The longer-term intention is to incorporate this into Fingertips as it is redeveloped.

Local health

For the ‘Local health’ tool, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to review and streamline content and functionality of ‘Local health’ and to close down the Geoclip tool, while ensuring essential functionality and data is maintained in Fingertips.

Most of the respondents agreed with the proposal to retain the ‘Local health small area data profile’ on Fingertips and with the closure of the Geoclip tool. Some respondents expressed concern over the loss of functionality currently provided within the Geoclip tool, such as the ability to calculate rates for areas defined by the user or to plot their own data.

Small area data is already available in Fingertips, which has the added benefit of allowing users to extract data via an API. The Fingertips platform is being redeveloped. This will include the development of the mapping capabilities and will aim to incorporate the most valued aspects of the functionality from Geoclip.

The importance of small area data was clear in the responses received. Many of the respondents commented that the data is now out of date due to the pause in the publication and that updating the indicators should be a priority. DHSC will update the current indicators in the tool with the latest timepoints once data is available and will close down the Geoclip tool.

DHSC will update the current indicators in the ‘Local health’ Fingertips tool with the latest timepoints once data is available and will close down the Geoclip tool.

The Fingertips platform is being redeveloped; this will include the development of the mapping capabilities and will aim to incorporate the most valued aspects of the functionality from Geoclip.

NHS Outcomes Framework indicators

For the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal that new data within this publication will focus mostly on indicators derived from ‘Hospital episode statistics’ and move to signposting rather than duplicating indicators that are produced elsewhere such as in the PHOF or ASCOF.

This proposal will ensure the consistent definition of indicators across all outcome frameworks and reduce the duplication of effort across statistical producing organisations.

The majority of respondents supported the proposal. Some concerns were raised regarding the perception that the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ were being reduced to only include the ‘Hospital episode statistics’ based indicators, which is not the case. The remaining indicators will still be part of the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ but with weblinks to the relevant data within the publication rather than data files.

Another concern raised was the potential separation of the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ from the PHOF and the ASCOF. Again, this is not the case. This proposal brings them closer together by linking directly from the ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ to the PHOF and ASCOF. This means where indicators have changed definition or have been stopped, that is carried through to the other frameworks.

NHS England will publish the revised ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ publication from winter 2024 to 2025 onwards. The revised publication will have an overarching web page with links to the data for each of the 5 ‘Hospital episode statistics’ based indicators, along with a data sources spreadsheet containing weblinks for the remaining indicators. This is the same format as the interim ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ published in April 2024.

NICE technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard)

For the ‘NICE technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard)’, previously produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation but it was transitioned to NHSBSA for future publications.

NHSBSA published its first version of ‘NICE technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard)’ in April 2024 and will continue to do so every 6 months.

While NHS England no longer produces this publication, some colleagues remain involved in discussions on its development.

Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF)

For the Public Health Outcome Framework (PHOF), produced by DHSC, there was no proposal in the consultation.

The indicators in the PHOF will be refreshed to remove those where the data are no longer available, where a single year measure has replaced a 3-year measure and to make minor methods changes.

The intention is to complete a separate review of the PHOF. DHSC will review the current set of indicators to take account of the government’s public health and prevention priorities. The frequency of the PHOF updates will reduce from 4 times per year to 3 to consolidate the update process.

Wider determinants of health

For ‘Wider determinants of health’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to review indicators in this profile to prioritise important indicators, including those headline measures of wider determinants within the PHOF, cost of living indicators and those measuring access to ‘unhealthy’ premises - for example, those selling alcohol or fast food.

Some changes have already been made to the indicators presented in ‘Wider determinants of health’, based on previous user engagement. Indicators that were not relevant to health or were not measuring core wider or social determinants of health were removed. DHSC does not plan to make any further changes at this time unless they are a result of the forthcoming PHOF review.

There were some concerns that streamlining indicators would provide a narrow view of wider determinants if indicators on employment, housing, education and other socio-economic factors were removed. These measures will continue to be presented in the wider determinants profile as they are included in the PHOF and were not proposed to be removed. Many indicators on the wider and social determinants of health are published by other government departments in a greater level of detail. Where appropriate, DHSC will redirect users to the relevant publications.

Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool

For the ‘Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool’, produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to formally stop this.

The majority of respondents agreed with this proposal. Respondents noted the benefit of the tool during the pandemic, but many had not used it in the last 12 months.

DHSC will formally stop updates to the ‘Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool’.

Other publications

This section reflected recent changes that had been made to the overarching health and social care outputs, prior to the publication of the consultation. Most of the outputs listed below had been paused, except for the ‘Clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set (CCG OIS)’, which was stopped in 2022 following the abolition of CCGs. There were no specific proposals made for these outputs as part of the consultation. Since the consultation was launched, decisions have been made on the future of these publications as detailed here.

1. Clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set (CCG OIS)

The ‘Clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set (CCG OIS)’, previously published by NHS England, was stopped in 2022 following the abolition of CCGs. There was no specific proposal for this output included in the consultation.

2. Health index in England

Following a review of priorities, the ‘Health index in England’ and associated projections project published by ONS have been paused. There was no specific proposal for this output included in the consultation.

The majority of respondents stated they would like the production of the ‘Health index in England’ to continue. Feedback included requests for improved timeliness, granularity and coverage across the UK.

ONS will seek funding to continue the ‘Health index in England’ work, and regularly review its priority, with the aim to resume publication. Any future work will also explore developing the statistics in line with stakeholder feedback.

3. Health profile for England reports

No comments were received on the ‘Health profile for England’ reports, previously published by PHE.

There are no current plans to reinstate the ‘Health profile for England’ reports.

4. Local authority health profiles

Respondents noted that ‘Local authority health profiles’, published by DHSC, are used to inform policy and identify areas for comparison and improvement.

The ‘Local authority health profiles’ have 2 elements: an HTML report and an online profile. DHSC will continue to update the online profile but will no longer maintain the HTML report. DHSC will archive the HTML reports and will make them available on request.

5. Productive healthy ageing profile

Several respondents were disappointed that this profile had been paused, as the output is used locally within joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs). Some respondents commented that they had not specifically used this profile to locate data. However, they used data contained within it located from Fingertips in general or via other profiles.

Updates to the ‘Productive healthy ageing profile’ will be formally stopped. Most of the indicators will continue to be available via Fingertips. DHSC will ensure users can access the archived data and will signpost to indicators that remain active in other Fingertips profiles or are published by other government departments.

DHSC will formally discontinue the ‘Productive healthy ageing profile’.

6. Public health dashboard

No comments were received on the ‘Public health dashboard’, previously published by PHE.

There are no plans to reinstate updates to the ‘Public health dashboard’. Users will still have access to the archived data and the page will include signposting to indicators that remain active in other Fingertips profiles.

Question 21

14.  Primary care, community and oral health

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

The publications in scope for this section are:

Only those products with actions identified have specific actions listed against them.

General actions for publications across the primary care, community care and oral health publication space are to:

reform the primary care and dental English Health Statistics Steering Group (EHSSG) working group to create a central group again to help with consistency and coherence across the area; feedback in the survey stated that there were inconsistencies in how things were mapped and presented - reforming this group could help consolidate this work effectively
use EHSSG to produce a central webpage to point to all resources and publications available which cover primary care, community care and oral health; feedback indicated a central repository of publications and data available in primary care and oral health would be incredibly useful, as users are not aware of other data sources that could be useful to them
use EHSSG to work closer with other countries in the UK to ensure cohesiveness of primary care, community care and oral health data; feedback was given that users would like to compare (specifically) Welsh primary care data with English primary care data
seek regular consultation and feedback across all publications to ensure that publications continue to meet user needs
seek continued regular feedback to ensure we can ensure our publications meet user needs; feedback in several areas indicated that respondents were not sure about which changes or other measures would be useful

Future of statistical products in this area

All NHSBSA publications

The following publications produced by NHSBSA had no proposal in the consultation:

Dental statistics - England (previously published by NHS England)
Dependency forming medicines - England
General pharmaceutical services - England
Hormone replacement therapy - England
Medicines used in mental health - England
Prescription cost analysis - England
Prescribing costs in hospitals and the community - England
Prescribing for diabetes - England

For all NHSBSA publications listed, NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed.

NHSBSA will make signposting between publications and other supporting management information data sets that are hosted on the NHSBSA website or on the NHSBSA Open Data portal clearer (for example, between the annual dental statistics and the monthly management information feed for dental activity).

NHSBSA is developing a central hub to bring together management information, official statistics, research and analysis, dashboards, and data systems into one easily accessible place for users, including those of its public products and closed systems. NHSBSA will communicate more information about this project in due course.

This is to make navigating between data and different products easier for users, including to more timely data than might be available via official statistics. This will also allow NHSBSA to identify areas of duplication and make clearer assessments of the use and usefulness of products.

For all NHSBSA publications listed, NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.

NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.

Many users voiced support for continuing to provide narrative on trends within statistical products to help understand and interpret them. Users also identified the utility of dashboards in allowing further exploration of specific topics and areas.

For ‘Dental statistics - England’, NHSBSA will be aligning methodologies used to assign dental activity to a time period with the monthly management information published on the NHSBSA Open Data Portal. This will lead to greater coherence in dental reporting to allow greater scrutiny as we move towards system recovery.

NHSBSA will publish a supporting statistical narrative with the publication. This will draw out important measures and provide context and analysis of trends in dental data. This will include measures across geographies and looking at patient centred measures.

Users expressed an interest in supporting commentary to help with the interpretation of statistics and the trends within them.

Appointments in general practice

For ‘Appointments in general practice’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to:

consolidate the 2 existing Excel documents into a single Excel summary, with breakdowns from national level down to general practice level of all measures
reduce the number of different CSV files while having minimal impact on available cross-tabulations; a mapping file will be provided that will allow aggregations up to primary care network, sub-ICB, ICB, regional and national when joined with the CSV spreadsheets
remove breakdowns of GP appointments at a daily level and only presenting the figures at a monthly level

For ‘Appointments in general practice’, NHS England will carry out a streamlining of the publication, reducing the number of data files each month from 90 to 21.

NHS England will reduce timeseries from 30 months to 18 months on each monthly release, and publish all data at practice level, with mappings to allow for aggregation. This reduces the number of CSV files produced from 78 to 19. It will also include a single file showing the daily count of appointments at sub-ICB level, to replace the 30 current files.

NHS England will carry out a streamlining of the publication, reducing the number of data files each month from 90 to 21. Overall feedback on the proposal to streamline GP appointments data (GPAD) was positive, with most respondents being in favour of the proposed changes.

NHS England will reduce timeseries from 30 months to 18 months on each monthly release, and publish all data at practice level, with mappings to allow for aggregation. This reduces the number of CSV files produced from 78 to 19. Specific feedback was received about the number of data files produced each month being too much, so if NHS England could minimise the files but keep data usable it would be appreciated. This change achieves this.

NHS England will also include a single file showing the daily count of appointments at sub-ICB level, to replace the 30 current files. NHS England sought to remove daily counts entirely due to lack of use, but feedback suggested these were useful to several users, therefore an alternative format and reduced breakdowns will ensure daily counts are still available in a way that reduces the publication size in line with changes above.

‘Dental services’ profile

For the Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile, a new product to be produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to develop a new profile to provide a similar set of indicators to the GP profiles for patients and also draw in wider important oral health metrics. The proposal included a plan to regularly review this new dental profile, and seek to add new indicators and data where useful and appropriate.

The initial release of indicators provides an overview of data that is important to dentistry professionals, commissioners and patients, such as:

how many adults have been seen in the last 24 months
how many children have been seen in the last 12 months
how much of commissioned dental activity has been delivered in the local area

Users will be able to compare the outcomes of indicators to other local areas and view how the indicators are changing over time.

DHSC will explore which measures are helpful to include in the Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile, and which measures will produce the most insight for users.

DHSC is exploring the introduction of demographic measures within the dental profiles to give more context to the dental measures.

Overall feedback on the profile was positive. However, respondents highlighted that there are multiple factors that may impact an area’s performance, including demographics. By providing demographic data alongside the dental metrics, it might help users better understand the wider context of the areas being looked at.

DHSC is additionally exploring the introduction of further metrics, both on oral health (for example, older people oral health surveys) and on NHS dental provision (for example, unit of dental activity (UDA) delivery by paying and non-paying adults, and data on treatments).

In general, respondents thought that more metrics within the profiles would be helpful, in particular those on oral health outcomes.

Fit notes issued by GP practices, England

For ‘Fit notes issued by GP practices, England’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

For ‘Fit notes issued by GP practices, England’, NHS England will review caveats and supporting documentation to ensure they are as clear as possible on the limitations of the data.

Some feedback requested further breakdowns of the data which are not possible due to limitations of the collection and eMED3 system. These limitations may not be highlighted well enough in the documentation.

GP patient survey (GPPS)

For the ‘GP patient survey’ (GPPS), produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to review the survey and streamline where elements are no longer required alongside other NHS England surveys on other topic areas. The survey is currently being redeveloped with new survey questions being designed.

NHS England brought dental reporting into more GPPS reporting outputs this year. NHS England will ensure the general practice and dentistry sections are presented separately and highlight the most important issues in accompanying narratives and bulletins.

When NHS England next reviews the content of the GPPS, it will consult with a wide range of stakeholders before making any significant changes, in line with the engagement done during previous redevelopments of the survey. In order to maintain trends in the data, NHS England plans to avoid further significant redevelopments to the survey wherever possible over the next few years.

Respondents told us there was not enough detail to comment on this proposal but would welcome further consultation on any future changes to the GPPS.

As part of the most recent publication, the recommendation to bring the dental reporting into more GPPS reporting outputs was actioned this year. These results have been included in the ‘National report’, the ‘National infographic’, the ‘Integrated care system slide packs’ and the ‘Interactive analysis tool’ for the first time in this year’s publication and have been presented under separate dental sections in these reports.

This is in line with the majority of responses in which a preference was expressed. The small number who disagreed did so due to differences in the funding models across the 2, and the high importance attached to the issue of accessing an NHS dentist. NHS England recognises these concerns and is confident these concerns will be addressed by ensuring the general practice and dentistry sections are presented separately, and by highlighting the most important issues in accompanying narratives and bulletins.

When NHS England next reviews the content of the GPPS, it expects to consult with a wide range of stakeholders before making any significant changes, in line with the engagement done during previous redevelopment of the survey. In 2023, the GPPS was redeveloped (ahead of the 2024 survey) following a detailed consultation with a wide range stakeholders, as outlined in the 2024 GPPS redevelopment report. In order to maintain trends in the data, NHS England plans to avoid further significant redevelopments to the survey wherever possible over the next few years and will always consult before making any significant changes to the survey.

‘GP profiles for patients’ and ‘National general practice profiles’

For ‘GP profiles for patients’ and ‘National general practice profiles’, there was a proposal to review and streamline DHSC GP products.

There are no planned changes to ‘GP profiles for patients’ nor ‘National general practice profiles’.

Other publications

For the following publications, there were no proposals in the consultation and there are no proposed changes:

‘Adult oral health survey’, produced by DHSC
‘Community services statistics’, produced by NHS England
‘GP in-hours syndromic surveillance’, produced by UKHSA
‘GP out-of-hours syndromic surveillance’, produced by UKHSA
‘Health and care of people with learning disabilities’, produced by NHS England
‘Hospital tooth extractions in 0 to 19 year olds’, produced by DHSC
‘NHS payments to general practice, England’, produced by NHS England
‘Oral health survey of 5 year old children’, produced by DHSC
‘Patients registered at a GP practice’, produced by NHS England
‘Primary care dementia data’, produced by NHS England
‘Quality and Outcomes Framework’, produced by NHS England

Question 22

15.  Smoking, drugs and alcohol

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Smoking, drugs and alcohol outputs are produced by ONS, DHSC and NHS England. In total, 10 smoking, drugs and alcohol outputs were included in the consultation. This section outlines the planned changes to these outputs following analysis of the consultation responses. The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

Local alcohol profiles for England (LAPE)

For the ‘Local alcohol profiles for England (LAPE)’ (renamed ‘Alcohol profile’), produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to review the content of the profile and to remove lesser used indicators.

Users require more information on which indicators will be removed before they can comment further.

Further work to understand user need is required for the ‘Respiratory disease’ profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.

Local tobacco control profiles

For the ‘Local tobacco control profiles’ (renamed ‘Smoking profile’), produced by DHSC, there was a proposal to review the content of the profile and to remove lesser used indicators.

Users require more information on which indicators are going to be removed before they can comment further.

Further work to understand user need is required for the ‘Local tobacco control profiles’. Once this has been conducted, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.

Statistics on public health

For ‘Statistics on public health’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to remove charts that use DHSC data and continue to signpost to the DHSC Fingertips tool where the admissions relating to alcohol data is published. There will be no change in the data available.

The rationale for this proposal is that it will result in a reduction of burden (duplicating effort) at a time of limited resources.

There was limited feedback on this proposal. However, the feedback was positive with respondents being happy and seeing this as a sensible change.

NHS England actioned the proposal to remove charts that use DHSC data and continue to signpost to the DHSC Fingertips tool for ‘Statistics on public health’ within the 2022 to 2023 publication published in December 2023 as a pilot. NHS England will continue this in future publications.

NHS England, DHSC and ONS will continue to work collaboratively to investigate the potential of more coherence in terms of publication dates and signposting to each other’s work, and whether any further duplication of work could be removed.

Statistics on women’s smoking status at time of delivery: England

For ‘Statistics on women’s smoking status at time of delivery: England’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to change the data source for this publication from the ‘Smoking at the time of delivery’ (SATOD) data collection to the ‘Maternity services data set’ (MSDS).

This proposal was driven by the need to reduce burden on data collection from sub-ICBs. The proposal is to decommission the original data collection and merge the publication into the Maternity services monthly statistics and annual statistics publications. This will increase the potential for additional breakdowns to be included.

Most responses received were in favour of the proposal.

Respondents raised concerns regarding the quality of the MSDS data, including the:

level of unknowns
need to be able to compare MSDS and SATOD for completeness
continued need for local authority level data.

NHS England will take forward and implement the proposal to change the data source for ‘Statistics on women’s smoking status at time of delivery: England’ from the SATOD to the MSDS from 2025 to 2026 onwards.

To support the migration from the SATOD data collection to the MSDS, NHS England will publish the indicator based on each data source in parallel in the quarterly SATOD publication for each quarter during 2024 to 2025 along with a historical time series. The annual 2023 to 2024 MSDS publication will include the indicator based on annual data by local authority of residence and some inequality breakdowns at England level by maternal age, maternal ethnicity and deprivation using postcode of residence for 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024.

A working group has already been formed and is looking at aligning definitions across the 2 current data collections. Historically, the higher incidence of unknowns within MSDS is due to providers having limited guidance on how to submit smoking status. NHS England is working more closely with providers, and it is felt the reduced burden of having to submit data twice will also improve data quality within MSDS.

As part of this change, NHS England will create a new output that includes local authority data that is available in MSDS. The move to MSDS will also enable the incorporation of additional demographic breakdowns - for example, age, ethnicity and deprivation - which will provide greater granularity for users.

Other publications

The following outputs did not have a specific proposal in the consultation and did not receive any specific feedback so will continue to be published going forward with no changes:

‘Adult smoking habits in the UK’, produced by ONS
‘Smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England’, produced by NHS England
‘Statistics on NHS stop smoking services in England’, produced by NHS England
‘Substance misuse treatment for adults’, produced by DHSC
‘Substance misuse treatment for young people’, produced by DHSC
‘Substance misuse treatment in secure settings’, produced by DHSC

Question 23

16.  Urgent, emergency and acute care

Accepted Answer

Contextual information

Urgent, emergency and acute care covers a wide range of publications including:

accident and emergency (A&E) performance and activity
ambulance indicators
integrated urgent care (including NHS 111)
bed volumes and occupancy rates
health surveillance data

We received a limited amount of feedback for most of the publications in this topic, with some of the responses reflecting some confusion around the scope of each publication, which have historically been on different websites.

This shows that there is value in improving the structures and website descriptions for this area. There are some general actions that can be put into place to improve the experience for the user.

Firstly, there is already wider work underway on the consolidation of the former NHS England and NHS Digital websites. This will help to improve clarity on what users can access from where, rather than switching between websites. NHS England will also look to improve the descriptions on its website and improve signposting to alternative publications that would contain more detail (for example, to provide clearer links to the more detailed annual A&E activity data that some users would find more useful).

The publications in scope for this section are:

Future of statistical products in this area

A&E attendances and emergency admissions

For ‘A&E attendances and emergency admissions’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

Some planned additions and improvements are to:

improve the description of the scope of the publication on the website, and improve signposting to linked publications, such as the more granular annual A&E activity publication
further increase the content of the ‘Emergency care data set’ (ECDS) section of the publication as ECDS improves in coverage
explore producing site level data where appropriate

NHS England will improve the description of the scope of ‘A&E attendances and emergency admissions’ on the website and improve signposting to linked publications. NHS England will explore opportunities to increase the content of the dataset, where appropriate.

Critical care bed capacity and urgent operations cancelled

For ‘Critical care bed capacity and urgent operations cancelled’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to discontinue this publication as most data items have an equivalent in the Urgent and emergency care daily situation reports. This publication was suspended in March 2020.

Respondents who disagreed with this proposal were generally unaware of the equivalent publication. Therefore, NHS England will implement this change.

NHS England will discontinue ‘Critical care bed capacity and urgent operations cancelled’ and improve the signposting to ‘Urgent and emergency care daily situation reports’ from the old critical care beds webpage.

Hospital accident and emergency activity

For ‘Hospital accident and emergency activity’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

NHS England will improve signposting to the monthly A&E performance and activity publication in ‘Hospital accident and emergency activity’.

Patient level activity and costing

For ‘Patient level activity and costing’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to discontinue this publication and merge the content into the National cost collection for the NHS data publication.

No substantive objections were received in the consultation.

NHS England will discontinue ‘Patient level activity and costing’ and merge the content with the ‘National cost collection for the NHS’ data publication.

Virtual ward capacity and occupancy

For ‘Virtual ward capacity and occupancy’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

There are no immediate changes planned for ‘Virtual ward capacity and occupancy’. NHS England is currently developing a record-level national minimum dataset which, once implemented, would improve granularity in the data available to users.

Other publications

The following outputs did not have a specific proposal in the consultation and no changes are planned:

‘Ambulance quality indicators’, produced by NHS England
‘Bed availability and occupancy’, produced by NHS England
‘Compendium: emergency readmissions to hospital within 30 days of discharge’, produced by NHS England
‘Emergency department syndromic surveillance’, produced by UKHSA
‘Integrated urgent care aggregate data collection (IUC ADC)’, produced by NHS England
‘National ambulance syndromic surveillance’, produced by UKHSA
‘NHS 111 patient experience survey’, produced by NHS England
‘Provisional accident and emergency quality indicators for England’, produced by NHS England
‘Remote health advice syndromic surveillance’, produced by UKHSA

Question 24

17.  Workforce and estates

Accepted Answer

Contextual information: workforce

NHS workforce publications cover primary and secondary care as well as the independent sector. Information on staff, their earnings and vacancies are largely released monthly. NHS England produces the official statistics in this area.

In summary, some changes to allow for greater efficiency will be rolled out further (for example, more HTML outputs and less commentary), which will allow for proposed further content to be considered.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Contextual information: estates

Estates publications are all produced by NHS England. Apart from ‘NHS surplus land’, the publications and associated collections are annual.

NHS England’s planned changes are minimal, and involve re-formatting the releases and moving away from static PowerPoint to interactive data visualisations to improve the layout and enable more efficient production of the publications.

The publications in scope for this section are:

Estates returns information collection, produced by NHS England
NHS surplus land, produced by NHS England
Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE) , produced by NHS England

Future of workforce statistical products

‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’

For ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to merge the 2 publications and to turn the published timeseries tables into a rolling series, with earlier periods removed at each release. This is to improve coherence and create efficiencies.

Most consultation responses expressed concern that merging the publications would result in lost information. These comments seem based on a misunderstanding that NHS England intended to consolidate publication files by combining the 2 workforces into one set of figures, which was not its intention. As a result, there were objections to NHS England’s plans. However, NHS England now believes the merger would not achieve the desired efficiency savings nor provide a clearer distinction between the 2 sets of figures.

Some respondents expressed concerns that a move to a rolling time series would remove access to old reports or replace snapshot figures with rolling averages. Though neither was planned, NHS England has decided to consider the feedback from respondents who emphasised the need to view the full time series to monitor trends without piecing together separate files. This proposal would not have provided large efficiency savings and was meant to enhance user-friendliness as these tables grow monthly. Based on this feedback, NHS England believes it is best to continue expanding the time series.

NHS England will not merge the ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’ publications or introduce rolling timeseries. NHS England will investigate the suggestion to include statistics on the uptake of retention schemes and data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs.

Feedback from respondents suggested including statistics on the uptake of retention schemes, data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs and statistics identifying the number of newly qualified GPs as a subset of the workforce. NHS England will add investigation of these into its development backlog.

Feedback from respondents suggested to include more detailed data on practice closures versus practice mergers. Unfortunately, we do not hold any more detailed information and so we are unable to do this.

Feedback from respondents suggested to introduce a separate short statistical summary highlighting trends in additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS) roles. This workforce can be identified within the ‘Primary care network workforce’ publication. Therefore, NHS England does not plan to introduce a separate series.

General practitioner workforce in alternative settings

For ‘General practitioner workforce in alternative settings’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to formally discontinue this series, which has only been published twice in 2019 as experimental statistics.

The data for this series is no longer collected and provides a limited and uncertain picture of GPs working outside of general practice. Most respondents agreed or did not express a preference.

NHS England will formally discontinue ‘General practitioner workforce in alternative settings’. The series publication page will be updated by the end of 2024 to clarify that this series has been discontinued.

‘GP earnings and expenses estimates’, ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’ and ‘Dentists’ working patterns, motivation and morale’

For ‘GP earnings and expenses estimates’ and ‘Dentists’ working patterns, motivation and morale’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to reduce supporting commentary.

For ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to reduce some of the data-specific pages in the publication and make it available in CSV format or a Power BI dashboard instead, and to merge and restructure the 4 time series Excel data files into one.

NHS England has implemented the changes set out in the consultation. Commentary in the ‘GP earnings and expenses estimates’, ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’, and ‘Dental working hours survey’ publications has been reduced, and for ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’ a simplification of the timeseries and HTML publication. No data has been lost. NHS England implemented these changes in the publications from summer 2024.

In addition, NHS England will investigate the possibility of including an ethnicity breakdown on the GP earnings analysis to further inform Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) reviews. NHS England will use these changes to further automate the publications.

NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for ‘GP earnings and expenses estimates’, ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’ and Dentists’ working patterns, motivation and morale’. NHS England has also simplified the timeseries and HTML publication for ‘Dental earnings and expenses estimates’. NHS England will investigate including an ethnicity breakdown on the GP earnings analysis to further inform DDRB reviews.

Independent healthcare provider workforce statistics

For ‘Independent healthcare provider workforce statistics’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to discontinue this biannual report. NHS England paused the publication in 2021 because the report does not provide an accurate view of the workforce in these settings as not all providers submit data.

Overall, respondents disagreed with discontinuing this publication. There was acknowledgment that while these statistics are incomplete, they are the best and only available data on the health workforce outside direct NHS employment and the collection needs to be more robust. With more healthcare being outsourced from the NHS, further (not less) information from the independent sector about its workforce is needed.

NHS England will re-consider the proposal to discontinue ‘Independent healthcare provider workforce statistics’ and undertake a discovery exercise later in 2024 to 2025 to:

identify ways of increasing participation
investigate the ability to require provision of data
identify a different collection tool
identify the important areas stakeholders are interested in

NHS sickness absence rates

For ‘NHS sickness absence rates’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

Feedback suggested to introduce signposting between the 2 publications of sickness absence data in NHS England: NHS sickness absence rates from ESR and those from situation report (sitrep) data collections. Links have been included to the sitrep reports within the related links section of the publication page. NHS England will engage with colleagues who produce these reports and update commentary to explain how to use if appropriate.

NHS England has included links to sitrep reports within the related links section of ‘NHS sickness absence rates’. NHS England will engage with colleagues who produce these reports and update commentary to explain how to use, if appropriate.

NHS staff earnings estimates

For ‘NHS staff earnings estimates’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

Feedback suggested to:

include the mean annual earnings of staff by AfC band and spine point
include tables which are used in the annual pay review body processes
review the methodology relating to the proportion of individuals in receipt of payment
review the methodology in earnings statistics relating to earnings for junior doctors when they complete annual rotations

Given the variety of requests in relation to earnings, NHS England will be considering the full content of this publication taking these requests into account.

Feedback suggested to develop and publish pay figures to cover ‘paybill’ to include employer National Insurance and employer pension contributions. This is outside the remit of the workforce official statistics.

NHS England will consider the full contents of ‘NHS staff earnings estimates’, taking into account requests for the inclusion of mean annual earnings by pay bands and tables used by the annual pay review body. This will also include a review of the methodology.

NHS vacancy statistics, England

For ‘NHS vacancy statistics, England’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to remove statistics that are based on the Trac and Electronic Staff Record (ESR) data and to understand if or how users make use of the Trac and ESR data sources within this publication and invite feedback.

Feedback suggested that the context provided by these data sources were important to some users. NHS England will keep these sources for the time being for context to the main ‘Provider workforce return’ data. NHS England is aware that changes to the guidance on how this data is provided may impact the data so it would be beneficial to keep the contextual information.

NHS England will not, as proposed, remove statistics in ‘NHS vacancy statistics, England’ that are based on the Trac and ESR data.

NHS workforce statistics

For ‘NHS workforce statistics’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to:

remove Excel pivot tables but continue to provide the underlying data in CSV format
reduce duplication where identical data is provided in different formats to reduce overlap and improve efficiency, including to:
- retire the ‘Redundancies table’ from the ‘Reason for leaving’ series
- retire ‘National time series in NHS and core orgs’ summary tables
reduce the ‘Equality and diversity in trust and core orgs’ to every 6 months (currently quarterly), on the basis that this only changes slowly over time

NHS England will remove Excel pivot tables but will continue to provide the underlying data in CSV format and within the bulletin tables. Several respondents stated they wanted the pivot tables to remain as they did not want the data to only be available in CSV files. NHS England will keep tables in the same format in publications, not just as flat CSV files, and will remove the specific pivot functionality. This will allow NHS England to further automate the publication process.

NHS England will retire the ‘Redundancies table’ from the ‘Reason for leaving’ series and retire ‘National time series in NHS and core orgs’ summary tables. This is to reduce overlaps and improve efficiency where data is duplicated.

NHS England will not, as proposed, reduce the ‘Equality and diversity in trust and core orgs’ to every 6 months. Those respondents who commented on reducing the frequency of demographic data to 6 months were comfortable with the change. However, as NHS England has developed the automation of these statistics, it has found that it will be more straightforward and efficient to produce these monthly alongside other statistics. Therefore, NHS England no longer plans to reduce the frequency of these outputs.

For ‘NHS workforce statistics’, NHS England will remove Excel pivot tables but will continue to provide the underlying data in CSV format and within the bulletin tables. NHS England will retire the ‘Redundancies table’ from the ‘Reason for leaving’ series and retire ‘National time series in NHS and core orgs’ summary tables. NHS England will not, as proposed, reduce the ‘Equality and diversity in trust and core orgs’ to every 6 months.

NHS England will also explore the feasibility of developing further metrics based on the feedback, and review definitions and data descriptions such as those relating to staff movement. Additionally, when the methodology and content of reports is revisited, NHS England will consider the statistics produced by the UK nations and align where possible or explain differences.

Feedback suggested to include a breakdown of the workforce statistics by registered nurses and health visitors. Data by nurses and health visitors is already available in the data published. Nurses and health visitors need to be registered to be employed. NHS England does not audit this for the purposes of publication, but it will be adhered to by NHS organisations.

To improve the data quality of ‘Reasons for leaving’ data, feedback suggested to:

make the difference between those leaving the NHS entirely and those leaving for another organisation more explicit
publish statistics on source of recruitment and destination of leavers by staff group more regularly

NHS England will consider the feasibility of developing further metrics to track staff over time. This will provide more detail on entry and exit from NHS England, and on movement between NHS organisations. ‘Reason for leaving’ is not a mandatory data item, but NHS England will encourage organisations to record this more consistently where possible.

Feedback suggested to publish data on the number of staff based on staff group, years of service and Agenda for Change (AfC) band and to publish more regular data that tracks staff through their careers - for example, the number of leavers by staff group, years of service and band. NHS England will consider the feasibility of developing further metrics to track staff over time. This will enable NHS England to publish data by years of service.

Feedback suggested to develop agreed definitions of cancer and cardiovascular workforce at a national level. Data on an agreed mental health workforce is currently published. At present, the national workforce dataset does not facilitate the capture of ‘disease specific’ or other specialised elements of the workforce.

Feedback suggested to continue to investigate different methodologies within NHS England for calculation of turnover data. NHS England is continuing these investigations and will update as soon as possible.

Feedback suggested to increase the amount of data released through the provisional file. NHS England will review the feasibility of this and implement where possible. This work will consider our implementation of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP), which may affect the timing of current releases of published data. NHS England will update on this position and discuss these timings as soon as possible and ahead of implementation. In the meantime, NHS England will review the phraseology used to describe these initial releases.

Feedback suggested to review the classifications used to define ‘very senior managers’ to be harmonised with that used in the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB). NHS England will review the definition of ‘very senior managers’ in conjunction with stakeholders as part of its planned workloads.

Feedback suggested to include information on the arm’s length body (ALB) and support side of the workforce in monthly CSV files. NHS England will publish data on ALB and support organisations monthly and in CSV files, and is currently developing this as part of its implementation of RAPs. This will be published when the work is complete.

Feedback suggested to include more accessible data descriptions (meaning of medical grades, caveats, inclusions and exclusions) and more commentary. NHS England will revisit how descriptive information explaining the statistics is presented, with the aim of making them clearer.

Feedback suggested to ensure better comparability of statistics across UK nations. When NHS England revisits the methodology and content of the report, it will consider the statistics produced by the UK nations and align where possible. A working group between the 4 nations has recently begun. Although comparability remains an issue, documentation is being worked on to show where alignment is possible and where differences exist.

Primary care workforce quarterly update

For ‘Primary care workforce quarterly update’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to review the need for GP locum data lag.

‘Primary care workforce quarterly update’ data matures 2 months later than the rest of the primary care workforce. Consequently, ad hoc locum figures in the ‘General practice workforce’ publication remain provisional for 2 months, and the tables relating to GPs in the ‘Primary care workforce quarterly update’ publication, which require the final figures, are released later than other files. Moving to a one-month reporting lag would enable a timelier release of the primary care workforce general practice figures, aligning with the release of figures for other staff groups. While the difference between the provisional and final figures is not yet sufficiently small, NHS England will continue monitoring this with a view to reducing the reporting lag. This proposal received no specific feedback through the consultation.

NHS England will monitor the ongoing need for a 2-month reporting lag in ad hoc locum figures for the ’Primary care workforce quarterly update’ publication.

Future of estates statistical products

Estates returns information collection

For the ‘Estates returns information collection’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

No changes are planned for the ‘Estates returns information collection’.

NHS surplus land

For ‘NHS surplus land’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to review the approach to data quality-related outputs, moving them to HTML format and including static information.

NHS England will review the approach to data quality-related outputs, moving them to HTML format by the end of 2024. This:

improves the layout of the release pages, bringing them into line with other NHS England official statistics
reduces the number of products the user needs to download from the release page
allows users to directly navigate through relevant information
enables these aspects of the publications to be more efficiently produced

There was little response to this proposal in the consultation.

NHS England will review the approach to data quality-related outputs in ‘NHS surplus land’, moving them to HTML format by the end of 2024.

Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE)

For ‘Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE)’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to:

review and simplify the data quality statement and provide it in HTML format
remove the PowerPoint presentation and replace it with limited additional Power BI pages

NHS England will review and move the data quality information to HTML format on the release pages. In addition, NHS England will remove the PowerPoint summary presentation and replace it with an interactive Power BI report. This improves the layout of the release pages, bringing them into line with other NHS England official statistics. It reduces the number of products the user needs to download from the release page and allows them to directly navigate through relevant information.

The interactive report is already available and both products have been issued for some time. The interactive report contains most of the headline information available in the old format report, with the additional benefit of the user being able to tailor the presentation to data important to them. NHS England will include information in the important facts where this is not possible. This also enables these aspects of the publications to be more efficiently produced. There was little response to this proposal in the consultation.

NHS England will review and move the data quality information to HTML format on the release pages for ‘Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE)’. In addition, the PowerPoint summary presentation will be removed and replaced with an interactive Power BI report.

Future of other publications in this area

Data on written complaints in the NHS

For ‘Data on written complaints in the NHS’, produced by NHS England, there was no proposal in the consultation.

For the 2022 to 2023 reporting year, in agreement with stakeholders at DHSC, NHS England introduced some changes to the way it presented the data. These changes centred on reducing the amount of commentary and published bulletin tables that accompanied the release. With a sole exception (see first bullet point below), all the underlying data which featured in the bulletin tables was still made available within the CSV file which accompanied the publication.

The changes that NHS England has made are:

removing the table and data that showed complaints per head of population, which was not thought to be useful when considering the scale of complaints
removing age range, complainant status and staff group from the bulletin tables (retained in the CSV)
removing important facts that related to the data items which had been removed, and of more detailed important facts within each of the primary and secondary care sectors

NHS England implemented changes to ‘Data on written complaints in the NHS’ for the 2022 to 2023 reporting year. The changes centred on reducing the amount of commentary and published bulletin tables that accompanied the release as well as removing tables which pertained to complaints per head of population and introducing more detailed important facts within the primary and secondary care sectors.

National NHS staff survey

For the ‘National NHS staff survey’, produced by NHS England, there was a proposal to review to assess whether any elements are no longer required.

We did not receive any specific comments from respondents through the consultation.

NHS England regularly reviews the content and outputs based on the ‘National NHS staff survey’. As part of this, NHS England reviews any elements no longer needed.

Question 25

Next steps

Accepted Answer

Changes to individual outputs may need to be iterative as we continue to develop our joint strategy for publishing health and social care statistics for the future.

We would like to thank all respondents for their valuable feedback, which will continue to inform the direction of the health and social care statistical landscape.

The consultation has provided us with an opportunity to engage with a variety of users on a broad range of statistics and the feedback will be used to help us set our priorities for the future. We welcome ongoing user feedback on our releases. Please use the contact details on individual publication webpages to share feedback.

If you have any queries, email statistics@dhsc.gov.uk.

Question 26

Annex 1: Summary table of future of statistical products

Accepted Answer

Table 6: summary table of future of statistical products

Publication	Organisation	Topic	Future of statistical product
‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’ which contains ‘Adult social care finance report’ (ASCFR) and ‘Short and long term report’ (SALT)	NHS England	Adult social care	The report will remain similar to the previous publication. Although NHS England will reduce the data tables, the full data used to produce the tables will continue to be provided in CSV format (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Adult social care in England, monthly statistics	DHSC	Adult social care	DHSC will continue to publish these statistics monthly, and will include commentary as more metrics are added.
Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF)	NHS England	Adult social care	The publication will see some reduction in the commentary and changes to the reported indicators. NHS England does not plan to provide CLD indicators or shadow statistics in the 2024 publication (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Adult social care statistics in England: an overview	NHS England	Adult social care	NHS England will no longer publish this publication.
Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England	ONS	Adult social care	Further releases in the series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.
Deferred payment agreements	NHS England	Adult social care	There are no changes planned to this publication from previous years.
Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England	ONS	Adult social care	Further releases in series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not currently a priority.
Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned from previous publications.
Life expectancy in care homes (England and Wales)	ONS	Adult social care	There are not currently any plans to produce further releases of this publication because of the reliance on census data for the care home resident population which becomes increasingly inaccurate as we move further away from the census year (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Measures from the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), England	NHS England	Adult social care	This publication will see some reduction in the commentary and changes to the reported indicators. NHS England does not plan to provide CLD indicators or shadow statistics in the 2024 publication.
Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)	NHS England	Adult social care	There are no planned changes, except where the agreed change for measuring ‘fully assessed’ cases was added.
Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS), England	NHS England	Adult social care	The publication will continue on an annual basis. NHS England will reduce commentary in the main report and will reduce the Data quality report. (Current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Personal social services survey of adult carers in England (SACE)	NHS England	Adult social care	NHS England will reduce commentary on the overall report and will omit some sections of the Data quality report. (Current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Registered blind and partially sighted people	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned for this publication. The report is next due in 2026 to 2027.
Safeguarding adults (SAC), England	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Cancer registration statistics, England	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’, will merge as planned. NDRS will further examine how to publish a wider range of health and administrative geographies, counts of incidence and mortality data together, and incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible.
Cancer survival in England	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’ will merge as planned by the next release planned for October 2025. NDRS will undertake further work to expand the range of survival estimates for groups by cancer site and age group, to explore creating trend estimates for current estimates, and to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations and survival approach to employ, to address request for survival estimates by ‘routes to diagnosis’.
Case-mix adjusted percentages of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’, will merge as planned. NDRS will further examine how to publish a wider range of health and administrative geographies, counts of incidence and mortality data together, and incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible.
Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data	NHS England	Cancer	In response to the comments received for this publication, NDRS will address the request for more timely data by exploring publishing this as part of the Rapid cancer registration data series, which is approximately 4 months behind real time.
Index of cancer survival	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’ will merge as planned by the next release planned for October 2025. NDRS will undertake further work to expand the range of survival estimates for groups by cancer site and age group, to explore creating trend estimates for current estimates, and to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations and survival approach to employ, to address request for survival estimates by ‘routes to diagnosis’.
National cancer patient experience survey	NHS England	Cancer	NDRS will undertake further engagement with stakeholders and survey advisory groups when the publications reporting suite is reviewed. NDRS will further consider making more granular and raw data available.
Routes to diagnosis	NHS England	Cancer	NDRS will explore publishing more geographic breakdowns of the data in future updates of this publication. NDRS will test the combinations to prevent disclosure of patient identifiable data before implementing.
Under 16 cancer patient experience survey	NHS England	Cancer	NHS England will undertake further engagement with stakeholders and survey advisory groups when the publications reporting suite is reviewed. NDRS will further consider making more granular and raw data available.
Abortion statistics for England and Wales	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Admissions for children with long-term conditions	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Baby names in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Birth characteristics in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and will consult users on this output’s suitability.
Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and will consult users on this output’s suitability.
Births by parents’ country of birth, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Births in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and consult users on this output’s suitability.
Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.
Child and infant mortality in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	This publication frequency will not change. However, the presentation of data and results may change as part of a wider restructure of ONS’s child health statistics.
Child and maternal health profiles	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.
Child education	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Childhood vaccination coverage statistics, England	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Conceptions in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Female genital mutilation	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	NHS England will go ahead with the proposal from February 2025 for the Q2 2024 to 2025 report onward, to publish data each quarter but stop producing the written report and Excel files. The annual report will remain unchanged.
Health visitor services delivery metrics	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	The source is expected change to the Community Services Dataset at some date in the future, subject to data quality.
Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in children of school age (annual)	UKHSA	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in children of school age (monthly)	UKHSA	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Maternity services monthly statistics	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
NCARDRS congenital anomaly statistics: annual data	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
NHS maternity statistics, England	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Quarterly conceptions of women under 18 years, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Sexual and reproductive health: annual update	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will undertake further consultation on this publication with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of sexual and reproductive health profiles. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Sexual and reproductive health services, England (contraception)	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	For now, ONS will continue to produce this publication as an annual publication. However, the presentation of data and results may change as a result of ONS’ wider restructure of child health statistics.
Coronavirus as recorded in primary care	NHS England	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	NHS England will continue with the proposal to discontinue this report.
National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
Seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in frontline healthcare workers	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
UK coronavirus dashboard	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
UKHSA data dashboard	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
Autism statistics	NHS England	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	No changes are planned for this publication.
Learning disability profiles	DHSC	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	Having reviewed the feedback, further work to understand user need in more detail is required to inform decisions regarding the future of this publication.
Learning disability services monthly statistics	NHS England	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	NHS England will include feedback from the consultation in its publication planning and development process for this publication. As part of this process, NHS England reviews feedback from stakeholders to help inform future development.
Outcomes for disabled people in the UK	ONS	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	The Annual Population Survey is a major source of information for this publication, but it is currently undergoing transformation. Therefore, ONS will pause the publication until the required development work, which will also include exploration of alternate administrative data sources, has been completed. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.
Breast screening programme, England	NHS England	Elective activity	While there are no changes currently planned for this publication, ongoing work to bring legacy NHS Digital and NHS England publications together following the merger may lead to planned changes at a later date. If these are significant, NHS England will consider the appropriate way to engage with users.
Cancelled elective operations	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England does not intend to make the change to the data source for this publication in the near future as further feasibility and development work is required, including to the completeness and quality of data from the alternative source and linkage to the Hospital episode statistics to derive information on time to readmission.
Cervical screening programme, England	NHS England	Elective activity	While there are no changes currently planned for this publication, ongoing work to bring legacy NHS Digital and NHS England publications together following the merger may lead to planned changes at a later date. If these are significant, NHS England will consider the appropriate way to engage with users.
Consultant-led outpatient referrals	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England intends to discontinue this publication permanently. The publication has been paused since May 2024.
Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England has started to make some information available from the ‘Waiting list minimum data set’ alongside the official statistics. NHS England has a programme of work to identify data quality issues and, through regional teams, to support providers to address them. NHS England does not currently have a timetable in mind for the switchover from ‘Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times’ to ‘Waiting list minimum data set’, although it remains the longer-term intention to make this transition. This is dependent on the rate of progress with which data quality can be improved and making sure arrangements are in place for an orderly transition. NHS England will revisit the issue and consult again, if necessary, in due course.
Diagnostic imaging dataset	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England will consider the request for data on whether the procedure led to a diagnosis and the type of diagnosis, when the next set of changes to this publication are developed.
Diagnostics waiting times and activity data	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England will consider the requests for greater granularity for adult and paediatric waits and different audiology tests, and inclusion of more respiratory tests, when the next set of changes to this publication are developed and consult separately on the proposals.
Direct access audiology waiting times	NHS England	Elective activity	In light of the consultation responses, NHS England intends to discontinue this publication permanently. The publication has been paused since March 2020.
Hospital admitted patient care activity	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hospital outpatient activity	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Mixed sex accommodation breaches	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for admitted patient care, outpatient and accident and emergency data	NHS England	Elective activity	At this stage, there are no immediate plans for changes due to the potential impact to users.
Care homes factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing a new expanded factsheet for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.
Palliative and end of life care profiles	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC will continue annual updates of the profiles including indicators describing place of death, deaths in care homes of temporary residents, emergency hospital admissions near end of life and the care home bed rate.
Patterns of care factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC will continue annual updates.
Place of death factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing revised factsheets for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.
National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England (discontinued)	ONS	End of life care	ONS has no current plans to reinstate this product.
Avoidable mortality in the UK	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expect annual reporting to continue.
COVID-19 health inequalities monitoring in England tool (CHIME)	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC intends to formally stop updating the CHIME tool and expects to archive the tool and indicator content in 2025. DHSC will signpost users to indicators that remain active in other products.
Health inequalities dashboard	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is exploring the best way to implement merging the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ with the ‘Segment tool’.
Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Health state life expectancies, UK	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Life expectancy for local areas of the UK	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Segment tool	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is exploring the best way to implement merging the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ with the ‘Segment tool’.
Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.
Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.
Spotlight	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is currently exploring ways to update ‘Spotlight’, considering how best to meet the need for sub-national data, and how to integrate the tool with other outputs on health inequalities.
Trend in life expectancy by National Statistics socioeconomic classification, England and Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	Currently, future changes to this publication are still being discussed.
CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for these profiles. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of each profile (CVD and diabetes).
CVD prevention packs	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a plan for future ‘CVD prevention packs’, or a replacement product, on the front page of the CVD profile.
Cardiovascular disease prevention audit (CVDPREVENT)	DHSC	Major conditions	There are no proposals to make changes to this publication based on the feedback. However, DHSC will bring a subset of indicators from CVDPREVENT into the CVD profile.
Dementia surveillance factsheet	DHSC	Major conditions	Monthly publishing of this factsheet will continue. DHSC will consult on potential integration of indicators from the Dementia new indicators factsheet into the ‘Dementia profile’ or the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ in the future. Further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the ‘Dementia profile’.
Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England	ONS and DHSC	Major conditions	ONS will explore options for funding and resourcing the production of more up-to-date and disaggregated statistics on ‘Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England’, subject to statistical quality considerations and acknowledging that characteristics recorded in Census 2021 become increasingly outdated over time.
Interactive health atlas of lung conditions in England (INHALE) - now ‘Respiratory disease’ profile	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for this profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile. Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.
Musculoskeletal health: local profiles	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for these profiles. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England	DHSC	Major conditions	The report will remain paused until there are sufficient resources available to provide an update.
NHS Health Check	DHSC	Major conditions	There is no proposal to change the profile at this time. However, DHSC will explore the issues raised by respondents, with a view to making further data available in future.
All statistical products produced by NHS England	NHS England	Mental health	For the review of all products on mental health produced by NHS England, NHS England will engage further with users ahead of any changes.
Adult psychiatric morbidity survey	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Children living with parents in emotional distress	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will review this publication to assess the underlying methodology and ongoing resourcing of annual updates across DHSC and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as this is a joint publication.
Common mental health disorders (CMHD) profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Severe mental illness (SMI)’ profile and ‘Common mental health disorders (CMHD)’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Excess under 75 mortality rates in adults with serious mental illness	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
Mental health bulletin	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
Mental health and wellbeing JSNA profile	DHSC	Mental health	The proposal is to remove this profile as indicators and topic content are covered by the remaining mental profiles. The exception to this process is the wellbeing topic, that for adults is included in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile only. The combined and revised perinatal and children and young people mental health profile will cover wellbeing, and DHSC will add the wellbeing topic in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile to the new adult mental health profile (and follow the outlined review process). This approach will reduce duplication, improve end user experience and will improve resourcing for profiles updates.
Mental health of children and young people in England	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Mental health services monthly statistics	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
NHS talking therapies monthly statistics including employment advisors	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Out of area placements in mental health services	NHS England	Mental health	The bespoke collection for Out of Area Placements (OAPs) was an interim data collection put in place until the data quality of OAPs data within the MHSDS was of sufficient quality; the bespoke collection was retired at the end of March 2024. From April 2024 onwards out of area placements are solely collected via the MHSDS. To allow for comparisons with the bespoke collection, out of area placements started being reported from the MHSDS from April 2023. This change was implemented to reduce the burden on data submitters, so that they did not need to submit out of area placements to 2 different data collections.
Perinatal mental health profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness (SMI)	NHS England	Mental health	From April 2024, physical health checks for people with severe mental illness is collected directly from General Practices via GPES. The first quarterly publication from the new collection covered quarter 1 (April to June 2024) and was published in September 2024.
Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will continue publishing indicators on premature and excess premature mortality, and pilot moving analysis reports on indicators used and interpretation to a ‘Statistical Commentary’ format. DHSC will review the methodology for the indicators with input from NHS England.
Psychological therapies, annual report on the use of IAPT services	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Severe mental illness (SMI) profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Severe mental illness (SMI)’ profile and ‘Common mental health disorders (CMHD)’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Suicide prevention profile	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries to reduce duplication.
Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK	ONS	Mortality	ONS will publish as a headline only release going forward.
Climate-related mortality, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS is broadening this publication to extend the time period to 2023 and to consider other causes of death (for example, cardiovascular, respiratory) and demographic characteristics (for example, age, sex, deprivation). ONS will then consider similar developments for reporting heat and cold-related morbidity using hospital admissions data.
Deaths of care home residents, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will pause publishing these statistics until the required development work is completed. Once complete, ONS will continue to publish these statistics regularly. ONS will continue to publish statistics on deaths in care homes as part of the ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’ release.
Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will continue to publish ‘Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales’, but will undertake an improvement programme to provide more robust statistics to help better meet user needs.
Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn annually. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK	ONS	Mortality	ONS will implement the merge for outputs ‘Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK’ and ‘Vital statistics in the UK’ for the next release.
Deaths registered in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will initially keep ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’ as a headline only release. In the longer term, ONS will explore alternative ways of presenting this output such as dashboards.
Deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Excess mortality during heat-periods	UKHSA and ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Excess mortality in England and English regions	DHSC	Mortality	For this publication, the baseline period is now based on trends in mortality rates in the most recent 5 years, rather than the 5 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. DHSC is now also presenting estimates by month, rather than week, in the new, post-pandemic version of its excess mortality report.
Heat mortality monitoring report	UKHSA	Mortality	UKHSA is exploring the implementation of additional geographical breakdowns in future reports, but due to the statistical uncertainty in estimating heat-associated deaths and the small numbers involved (fewer than 500 heat-associated deaths in each region in summer 2023), it is unlikely that UKHSA will be able to present data for a single year at local authority level.
Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Mortality profile	DHSC	Mortality	DHSC has already taken steps to increase the number of indicators included this profile, increasing the number of causes of deaths for which trends in mortality rates are now available. In February 2024, the profile was expanded to include 18 new indicators, 14 of which had previously been reported in either NHS England’s Mortality Compendium or DHSC’s ‘Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool’.
Quarterly suicide death registrations in England	ONS	Mortality	ONS will publish as a headline only release rather than data only.
Suicides in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Summary hospital-level mortality indicator (SHMI) - deaths associated with hospitalisation, England	NHS England	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages	ONS	Mortality	ONS will implement the merge for outputs Deaths registered by area of usual residence and Vital statistics in the UK for the next release.
Weekly all-cause mortality surveillance	UKHSA	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Winter mortality in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will complete a review of this publication and publish a proposal on the future of these statistics.
Changes in the weight status of children between the first and final years of primary school	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	No changes are planned for this publication.
National Child Measurement Programme headline report	NHS England	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025.
National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025.
National Diet and Nutrition Survey	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	This survey is currently published every 4 years by DHSC but will move to an annual report which coincides with an increase in the sample size to deliver robust annual estimates. The first annual report is expected to be published in 2026. These changes were planned outside of this consultation.
Obesity profile	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025. The ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’ will merge and DHSC will consolidate the content to include important indicators on diet as well. Prior to the merger, further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front pages of the obesity and physical activity profiles.
Physical activity data tool	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’ will merge and DHSC will consolidate the content to include important indicators on diet as well. Prior to the merger, further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front pages of the obesity and physical activity profiles.
Health Survey for England	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	Fieldwork is underway for the 2024 ‘Health Survey for England’ which will be published in 2025. Given the size of this survey and range of outputs, it is being reviewed and discussed separately. NHS England will publish the outcome as a standalone web page linked to this.
Local health	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHCS will update the current indicators in the Fingertips tool with the latest timepoints once data are available and will close down the Geoclip tool. The Fingertips platform is being redeveloped; this will include the development of the mapping capabilities and will aim to incorporate the most valued aspects of the functionality from Geoclip.
NICE technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard)	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	The NHSBSA published its first version of this publication in April 2024 and will continue to do so every 6 months.
NHS Outcomes Framework indicators	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	NHS England will publish the revised framework from winter 2024 to 2025 onwards. The revised publication will have an overarching web page with links to the data for each of the 5 HES based indicators, along with a data sources spreadsheet containing weblinks for the remaining indicators. This is the same format as the interim ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ published in April 2024.
Public Health Outcomes Framework	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	The indicators in the PHOF will be refreshed to remove those where the data are no-longer available, where a single year measure has replaced a 3-year measure and to make minor methods changes. The intention is to complete a separate review of the PHOF. DHSC will review the current set of indicators to take account of the government’s public health and prevention priorities. The frequency of the PHOF updates will reduce from 4 times per year to 3 to consolidate the update process.
Wider determinants of health	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	Some changes have already been made to the indicators presented in this publication, based on previous user engagement. Indicators that were not relevant to health or were not measuring core wider or social determinants of health were removed. DHSC does not plan to make any further changes at this time unless they are a result of the forthcoming PHOF review.
Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC will formally stop updates to the WICH tool.
Health trends in England	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC launched this publication in May 2024 and continues to release updates on a monthly basis. The longer-term intention is to incorporate this into Fingertips as it is redeveloped.
Productive healthy ageing profile	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC will formally discontinue this profile.
Local authority health profiles	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	The publication has 2 elements: a HTML report and an online profile. DHSC will continue to update the online profile but will no longer maintain the HTML report. DHSC will archive the HTML reports and will make them available on request.
Health profile for England reports	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	There are no current plans to reinstate these reports.
Health index	ONS	Overarching health and social care outputs	ONS will seek funding to continue the Health index work, and regularly review its priority, with the aim to resume publication. Any future work will also explore developing the statistics in line with stakeholder feedback.
Clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set (CCG OIS)	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	This publication was stopped in 2022 following the abolition of CCGs.
Public health dashboard	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	There are no plans to reinstate updates to the dashboard. Users will still have access to the archived data and the page will include signposting to indicators that remain active in other Fingertips profiles.
Appointments in general practice	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	For this publication, NHS England will carry out a streamlining of the publication, reducing the number of data files each month from 90 to 21. NHS England will reduce timeseries from 30 months to 18 months on each monthly release, and publish all data at practice level, with mappings to allow for aggregation. This reduces the number of CSV files produced from 78 to 19. It will also include a single file showing the daily count of appointments at sub-ICB level, to replace the 30 current files.
GP patient survey	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHS England brought dental reporting into more ‘GP patient survey’ reporting outputs this year. NHS England will ensure the general practice and dentistry sections are presented separately and highlight the most important issues in accompanying narratives and bulletins. When NHS England next reviews the content of the GPPS, it will consult with a wide range of stakeholders before making any significant changes, in line with the engagement done during previous redevelopments of the survey. In order to maintain trends in the data, NHS England plans to avoid further significant redevelopments to the survey wherever possible over the next few years.
Adult oral health survey	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Community services statistics	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Dependency forming medicines - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Fit notes issued by GP practices, England	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHS England will review caveats and supporting documentation to ensure they are as clear as possible on the limitations of the data.
General pharmaceutical services - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
GP in-hours syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
GP out-of-hours syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
GP profiles for patients	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Health and care of people with learning disabilities	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hormone replacement therapy - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Hospital tooth extractions in 0 to 19 year olds	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Medicines used in mental health - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Dental statistics - England	NHSBSA (previously published by NHS England)	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user. For this publication, the NHSBSA will be aligning methodologies used to assign dental activity to a time period with the monthly management information published on the NHSBSA Open Data Portal. This will lead to greater coherence in dental reporting to allow greater scrutiny as we move towards system recovery. NHSBSA will be publishing a supporting statistical narrative with the publication. This will draw out important measures and provide context and analysis of trends in dental data. This will include measures across geographies and looking at patient centred measures.
NHS payments to general practice, England	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Patients registered at a GP practice	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Prescribing costs in hospitals and the community - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Prescribing for diabetes - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Prescription cost analysis - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Primary care dementia data	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Quality and Outcomes Framework	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	DHSC will explore which measures are helpful to include in the Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile, and which measures will produce the most insight for users.
National general practice profiles	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Oral health survey of 5 year old children	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on women’s smoking status at time of delivery: England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	NHS England will take forward and implement the proposal to change the data source for this publication from the SATOD to the MSDS from 2025 to 2026 onwards.
Adult smoking habits in the UK	ONS	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Local alcohol profiles for England (LAPE) (renamed ‘Alcohol profile’)	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Local tobacco control profiles (renamed ‘Smoking profile’)	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this has been carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on NHS stop smoking services in England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on public health, England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	NHS England actioned the proposal to remove charts that use DHSC data and continue to signpost to the DHSC Fingertips tool for ‘Statistics on public health’ within the 2022 to 2023 publication published in December 2023 as a pilot. NHS England will be continue this in future publications. NHS England, DHSC and ONS will continue to work collaboratively to investigate the potential of more coherence in terms of publication dates and signposting to each other’s work, and whether any further duplication of work could be removed.
Substance misuse treatment for adults	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Substance misuse treatment for young people	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Substance misuse treatment in secure settings	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Critical care bed capacity and urgent operations cancelled	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will discontinue this publication and improve the signposting to ‘Urgent and emergency care daily situation reports’ from the old critical care beds webpage.
Patient level activity and costing	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will discontinue this publication and merge the content with the ‘National cost collection for the NHS’ data publication.
A&E attendances and emergency admissions	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will improve the description of the scope of this publication on the website and improve signposting to linked publications. NHS England will explore opportunities to increase the content of the dataset, where appropriate.
Ambulance quality indicators	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Bed availability and occupancy	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Compendium: emergency readmissions to hospital within 30 days of discharge	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Emergency department syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hospital accident and emergency activity	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will improve signposting to the monthly A&E performance and activity publication in this publication
Integrated urgent care aggregate data collection (IUC ADC)	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
National ambulance syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
NHS 111 patient experience survey	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Provisional accident and emergency quality indicators for England	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Remote health advice syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Virtual ward capacity and occupancy	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	There are no immediate changes planned for this publication. NHS England is currently developing a record-level national minimum dataset which, once implemented, would improve granularity in the data available to users.
General practitioner workforce in alternative settings	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will formally discontinue this publication. The series publication page will be updated by the end of 2024 to clarify that this series has been discontinued.
Independent healthcare provider workforce statistics	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will re-consider the proposal to discontinue this publication and undertake a discovery exercise later in 2024 to 2025 with the aim of identifying ways of increasing participation, investigating the ability of NHS England to require provision of data, identify a different collection tool and identify the important areas stakeholders are interested in.
Data on written complaints in the NHS	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England implemented changes to this publication for the 2022 to 2023 reporting year. The changes centred on reducing the amount of commentary and published bulletin tables that accompanied the release as well as removing tables which pertained to complaints per head of population, and introducing more detailed important facts within the primary and secondary care sectors.
Dental earnings and expenses estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication and simplified the timeseries and HTML publication.
Dentists’ working patterns, motivation and morale	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication.
Estates returns information collection	NHS England	Workforce and estates	No changes are planned for this publication.
General practice workforce	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not merge the ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’ publications or introduce rolling timeseries. NHS England will investigate the suggestion to include statistics on the uptake of retention schemes and data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs.
GP earnings and expenses estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication. NHS England will investigate including an ethnicity breakdown on the GP earnings analysis to further inform review body on DDRB reviews.
National NHS staff survey	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England regularly reviews the content and outputs based on the ‘National NHS staff survey’. As part of this NHS England reviews any elements no longer needed.
NHS sickness absence rates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has included links to sitrep reports within the related links section of this publication. NHS England will engage with colleagues who produce these reports and update commentary to explain how to use, if appropriate.
NHS staff earnings estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will consider the full contents of this publication, taking into account requests for the inclusion of mean annual earnings by pay bands and tables used by the annual pay review body. This will also include a review of the methodology.
NHS surplus land	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will review the approach to data quality-related outputs in this publication, moving them to HTML format by the end of 2024.
NHS vacancy statistics, England	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not, as proposed, remove statistics that are based on the Trac and Electronic Staff Record (ESR) data from this publication
NHS workforce statistics	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will remove Excel pivot tables but will continue to provide the underlying data in CSV format and within the bulletin tables. NHS England will retire the ‘Redundancies table’ from the ‘Reason for leaving’ series and retire ‘National time series in NHS and core orgs’ summary tables. NHS England will not, as proposed, reduce the ‘Equality and diversity in trust and core orgs’ to every 6 months. NHS England will also explore the feasibility of developing further metrics based on the feedback, and review definitions and data descriptions such as those relating to staff movement. Additionally, when the methodology and content of reports is revisited, NHS England will consider the statistics produced by the UK nations and align where possible or explain differences.
Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE)	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will review and move the data quality information to HTML format on the release pages for this publication. In addition, the PowerPoint summary presentation will be removed and replaced with an interactive Power BI report.
Primary care network workforce	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not merge the ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’ publications or introduce rolling timeseries. NHS England will investigate the suggestion to include statistics on the uptake of retention schemes and data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs.
Primary care workforce quarterly update	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will monitor the ongoing need for a 2-month reporting lag in ad-hoc locum figures for this publication.

Question 27

Annex 2: Adult social care activity and finance report, England

Accepted Answer

Table 7: changes to ‘Adult social care activity and finance report’

Publication	Organisation	Topic	Future of statistical product
‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’ which contains ‘Adult social care finance report’ (ASCFR) and ‘Short and long term report’ (SALT)	NHS England	Adult social care	The report will remain similar to the previous publication. Although NHS England will reduce the data tables, the full data used to produce the tables will continue to be provided in CSV format (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Adult social care in England, monthly statistics	DHSC	Adult social care	DHSC will continue to publish these statistics monthly, and will include commentary as more metrics are added.
Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF)	NHS England	Adult social care	The publication will see some reduction in the commentary and changes to the reported indicators. NHS England does not plan to provide CLD indicators or shadow statistics in the 2024 publication (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Adult social care statistics in England: an overview	NHS England	Adult social care	NHS England will no longer publish this publication.
Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England	ONS	Adult social care	Further releases in the series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.
Deferred payment agreements	NHS England	Adult social care	There are no changes planned to this publication from previous years.
Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England	ONS	Adult social care	Further releases in series are dependent on DHSC funding. There is scope to explore improvements to the data by using alternative data sources, such as DHSC’s Capacity tracker. However, the development work required for this product is not currently a priority.
Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned from previous publications.
Life expectancy in care homes (England and Wales)	ONS	Adult social care	There are not currently any plans to produce further releases of this publication because of the reliance on census data for the care home resident population which becomes increasingly inaccurate as we move further away from the census year (current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Measures from the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), England	NHS England	Adult social care	This publication will see some reduction in the commentary and changes to the reported indicators. NHS England does not plan to provide CLD indicators or shadow statistics in the 2024 publication.
Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)	NHS England	Adult social care	There are no planned changes, except where the agreed change for measuring ‘fully assessed’ cases was added.
Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS), England	NHS England	Adult social care	The publication will continue on an annual basis. NHS England will reduce commentary in the main report and will reduce the Data quality report. (Current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Personal social services survey of adult carers in England (SACE)	NHS England	Adult social care	NHS England will reduce commentary on the overall report and will omit some sections of the Data quality report. (Current changes are for 2024 to 2025, future years may be subject to further consultation and work).
Registered blind and partially sighted people	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned for this publication. The report is next due in 2026 to 2027.
Safeguarding adults (SAC), England	NHS England	Adult social care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Cancer registration statistics, England	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’, will merge as planned. NDRS will further examine how to publish a wider range of health and administrative geographies, counts of incidence and mortality data together, and incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible.
Cancer survival in England	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’ will merge as planned by the next release planned for October 2025. NDRS will undertake further work to expand the range of survival estimates for groups by cancer site and age group, to explore creating trend estimates for current estimates, and to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations and survival approach to employ, to address request for survival estimates by ‘routes to diagnosis’.
Case-mix adjusted percentages of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’, will merge as planned. NDRS will further examine how to publish a wider range of health and administrative geographies, counts of incidence and mortality data together, and incidence by individual stages of diagnosis for common stageable cancers where possible.
Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data	NHS England	Cancer	In response to the comments received for this publication, NDRS will address the request for more timely data by exploring publishing this as part of the Rapid cancer registration data series, which is approximately 4 months behind real time.
Index of cancer survival	NHS England	Cancer	‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’ will merge as planned by the next release planned for October 2025. NDRS will undertake further work to expand the range of survival estimates for groups by cancer site and age group, to explore creating trend estimates for current estimates, and to seek advice on appropriate treatment combinations and survival approach to employ, to address request for survival estimates by ‘routes to diagnosis’.
National cancer patient experience survey	NHS England	Cancer	NDRS will undertake further engagement with stakeholders and survey advisory groups when the publications reporting suite is reviewed. NDRS will further consider making more granular and raw data available.
Routes to diagnosis	NHS England	Cancer	NDRS will explore publishing more geographic breakdowns of the data in future updates of this publication. NDRS will test the combinations to prevent disclosure of patient identifiable data before implementing.
Under 16 cancer patient experience survey	NHS England	Cancer	NHS England will undertake further engagement with stakeholders and survey advisory groups when the publications reporting suite is reviewed. NDRS will further consider making more granular and raw data available.
Abortion statistics for England and Wales	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Admissions for children with long-term conditions	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Baby names in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Birth characteristics in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and will consult users on this output’s suitability.
Births by parents’ characteristics in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and will consult users on this output’s suitability.
Births by parents’ country of birth, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Births in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	ONS will produce a mock-up of the combined ‘Births in England and Wales’, which will include priority tables from the Births by parents’ characteristics output, and ‘Birth characteristics in England and Wales’ release and consult users on this output’s suitability.
Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.
Child and infant mortality in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	This publication frequency will not change. However, the presentation of data and results may change as part of a wider restructure of ONS’s child health statistics.
Child and maternal health profiles	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will proceed with a feasibility study for change of data source. Our intention is to aim for the change in data source at the end of 2024 to 2025. The publication will reduce to annual, with data publication potentially reducing to annual too.
Child education	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will merge ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’ and ‘Child education’ with Child and maternal health profile and undertake further consultation with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of ‘Child and maternal health profiles’. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Childhood vaccination coverage statistics, England	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Conceptions in England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Female genital mutilation	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	NHS England will go ahead with the proposal from February 2025 for the Q2 2024 to 2025 report onward, to publish data each quarter but stop producing the written report and Excel files. The annual report will remain unchanged.
Health visitor services delivery metrics	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	The source is expected change to the Community Services Dataset at some date in the future, subject to data quality.
Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in children of school age (annual)	UKHSA	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in children of school age (monthly)	UKHSA	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Maternity services monthly statistics	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
NCARDRS congenital anomaly statistics: annual data	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
NHS maternity statistics, England	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Quarterly conceptions of women under 18 years, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Sexual and reproductive health: annual update	DHSC	Child, maternal and reproductive health	DHSC will undertake further consultation on this publication with a targeted user base on detailed restructure and refinement of sexual and reproductive health profiles. The aim is to start from December 2024.
Sexual and reproductive health services, England (contraception)	NHS England	Child, maternal and reproductive health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales	ONS	Child, maternal and reproductive health	For now, ONS will continue to produce this publication as an annual publication. However, the presentation of data and results may change as a result of ONS’ wider restructure of child health statistics.
Coronavirus as recorded in primary care	NHS England	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	NHS England will continue with the proposal to discontinue this report.
National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
Seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in frontline healthcare workers	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
UK coronavirus dashboard	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
UKHSA data dashboard	UKHSA	COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations	No changes are planned for this publication.
Autism statistics	NHS England	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	No changes are planned for this publication.
Learning disability profiles	DHSC	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	Having reviewed the feedback, further work to understand user need in more detail is required to inform decisions regarding the future of this publication.
Learning disability services monthly statistics	NHS England	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	NHS England will include feedback from the consultation in its publication planning and development process for this publication. As part of this process, NHS England reviews feedback from stakeholders to help inform future development.
Outcomes for disabled people in the UK	ONS	Disability, learning disabilities and autism	The Annual Population Survey is a major source of information for this publication, but it is currently undergoing transformation. Therefore, ONS will pause the publication until the required development work, which will also include exploration of alternate administrative data sources, has been completed. However, the development work required for this product is not a current priority.
Breast screening programme, England	NHS England	Elective activity	While there are no changes currently planned for this publication, ongoing work to bring legacy NHS Digital and NHS England publications together following the merger may lead to planned changes at a later date. If these are significant, NHS England will consider the appropriate way to engage with users.
Cancelled elective operations	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England does not intend to make the change to the data source for this publication in the near future as further feasibility and development work is required, including to the completeness and quality of data from the alternative source and linkage to the Hospital episode statistics to derive information on time to readmission.
Cervical screening programme, England	NHS England	Elective activity	While there are no changes currently planned for this publication, ongoing work to bring legacy NHS Digital and NHS England publications together following the merger may lead to planned changes at a later date. If these are significant, NHS England will consider the appropriate way to engage with users.
Consultant-led outpatient referrals	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England intends to discontinue this publication permanently. The publication has been paused since May 2024.
Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England has started to make some information available from the ‘Waiting list minimum data set’ alongside the official statistics. NHS England has a programme of work to identify data quality issues and, through regional teams, to support providers to address them. NHS England does not currently have a timetable in mind for the switchover from ‘Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times’ to ‘Waiting list minimum data set’, although it remains the longer-term intention to make this transition. This is dependent on the rate of progress with which data quality can be improved and making sure arrangements are in place for an orderly transition. NHS England will revisit the issue and consult again, if necessary, in due course.
Diagnostic imaging dataset	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England will consider the request for data on whether the procedure led to a diagnosis and the type of diagnosis, when the next set of changes to this publication are developed.
Diagnostics waiting times and activity data	NHS England	Elective activity	NHS England will consider the requests for greater granularity for adult and paediatric waits and different audiology tests, and inclusion of more respiratory tests, when the next set of changes to this publication are developed and consult separately on the proposals.
Direct access audiology waiting times	NHS England	Elective activity	In light of the consultation responses, NHS England intends to discontinue this publication permanently. The publication has been paused since March 2020.
Hospital admitted patient care activity	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hospital outpatient activity	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Mixed sex accommodation breaches	NHS England	Elective activity	No changes are planned for this publication.
Provisional monthly Hospital Episode Statistics for admitted patient care, outpatient and accident and emergency data	NHS England	Elective activity	At this stage, there are no immediate plans for changes due to the potential impact to users.
Care homes factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing a new expanded factsheet for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.
Palliative and end of life care profiles	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC will continue annual updates of the profiles including indicators describing place of death, deaths in care homes of temporary residents, emergency hospital admissions near end of life and the care home bed rate.
Patterns of care factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC will continue annual updates.
Place of death factsheet	DHSC	End of life care	DHSC reviewed this factsheet with the view of publishing revised factsheets for ICB and ICB sub-locations in autumn 2024. DHSC will produce quarterly updates of this.
National survey of bereaved people (VOICES): England (discontinued)	ONS	End of life care	ONS has no current plans to reinstate this product.
Avoidable mortality in the UK	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expect annual reporting to continue.
COVID-19 health inequalities monitoring in England tool (CHIME)	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC intends to formally stop updating the CHIME tool and expects to archive the tool and indicator content in 2025. DHSC will signpost users to indicators that remain active in other products.
Health inequalities dashboard	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is exploring the best way to implement merging the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ with the ‘Segment tool’.
Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Health state life expectancies, UK	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Life expectancy for local areas of the UK	ONS	Health inequalities	ONS intends to merge ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles, England’, ‘Health state life expectancies by national deprivation quintiles, Wales’, ‘Health state life expectancies, UK’ and ‘Life expectancy for local areas of the UK’. Subject to data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue. ONS will conduct a sources and methodological review during 2025 and consult on proposals for future proofing these releases. In particular, the review will explore the scope of linked administrative data sources to model health states suitable for use in health state life expectancy estimation. ONS will set up a research working group and actively involve stakeholders in needs assessment, research questions and project deliverables.
Segment tool	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is exploring the best way to implement merging the ‘Health inequalities dashboard’ with the ‘Segment tool’.
Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.
Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	‘Avoidable mortality in the UK’, ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in England’ and ‘Socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable mortality in Wales’ will merge from 2025, and subject to population data availability, ONS expects annual reporting to continue.
Spotlight	DHSC	Health inequalities	DHSC is currently exploring ways to update ‘Spotlight’, considering how best to meet the need for sub-national data, and how to integrate the tool with other outputs on health inequalities.
Trend in life expectancy by National Statistics socioeconomic classification, England and Wales	ONS	Health inequalities	Currently, future changes to this publication are still being discussed.
CVD, diabetes and kidney disease profiles	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for these profiles. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of each profile (CVD and diabetes).
CVD prevention packs	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a plan for future ‘CVD prevention packs’, or a replacement product, on the front page of the CVD profile.
Cardiovascular disease prevention audit (CVDPREVENT)	DHSC	Major conditions	There are no proposals to make changes to this publication based on the feedback. However, DHSC will bring a subset of indicators from CVDPREVENT into the CVD profile.
Dementia surveillance factsheet	DHSC	Major conditions	Monthly publishing of this factsheet will continue. DHSC will consult on potential integration of indicators from the Dementia new indicators factsheet into the ‘Dementia profile’ or the ‘Dementia surveillance factsheet’ in the future. Further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the ‘Dementia profile’.
Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England	ONS and DHSC	Major conditions	ONS will explore options for funding and resourcing the production of more up-to-date and disaggregated statistics on ‘Inequalities in mortality involving common physical health conditions, England’, subject to statistical quality considerations and acknowledging that characteristics recorded in Census 2021 become increasingly outdated over time.
Interactive health atlas of lung conditions in England (INHALE) - now ‘Respiratory disease’ profile	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for this profile. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile. Not all indicators are regularly updated and there is a need to find out whether all indicators are still valued by users.
Musculoskeletal health: local profiles	DHSC	Major conditions	Further work to understand user need is required for these profiles. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England	DHSC	Major conditions	The report will remain paused until there are sufficient resources available to provide an update.
NHS Health Check	DHSC	Major conditions	There is no proposal to change the profile at this time. However, DHSC will explore the issues raised by respondents, with a view to making further data available in future.
All statistical products produced by NHS England	NHS England	Mental health	For the review of all products on mental health produced by NHS England, NHS England will engage further with users ahead of any changes.
Adult psychiatric morbidity survey	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Children living with parents in emotional distress	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will review this publication to assess the underlying methodology and ongoing resourcing of annual updates across DHSC and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as this is a joint publication.
Common mental health disorders (CMHD) profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Severe mental illness (SMI)’ profile and ‘Common mental health disorders (CMHD)’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Excess under 75 mortality rates in adults with serious mental illness	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Mental Health Act statistics, annual figures	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
Mental health bulletin	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
Mental health and wellbeing JSNA profile	DHSC	Mental health	The proposal is to remove this profile as indicators and topic content are covered by the remaining mental profiles. The exception to this process is the wellbeing topic, that for adults is included in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile only. The combined and revised perinatal and children and young people mental health profile will cover wellbeing, and DHSC will add the wellbeing topic in the ‘Mental health and wellbeing JSNA’ profile to the new adult mental health profile (and follow the outlined review process). This approach will reduce duplication, improve end user experience and will improve resourcing for profiles updates.
Mental health of children and young people in England	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Mental health services monthly statistics	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will examine where there is duplication between the annual and monthly publication. It will engage with users to better understand which measures, breakdowns and outputs are useful, which can be updated or removed, and whether there are any new requirements. NHS England will develop a plan for publication and outputs going forward.
NHS talking therapies monthly statistics including employment advisors	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Out of area placements in mental health services	NHS England	Mental health	The bespoke collection for Out of Area Placements (OAPs) was an interim data collection put in place until the data quality of OAPs data within the MHSDS was of sufficient quality; the bespoke collection was retired at the end of March 2024. From April 2024 onwards out of area placements are solely collected via the MHSDS. To allow for comparisons with the bespoke collection, out of area placements started being reported from the MHSDS from April 2023. This change was implemented to reduce the burden on data submitters, so that they did not need to submit out of area placements to 2 different data collections.
Perinatal mental health profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing’ profile and ‘Perinatal mental health’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Physical health checks for people with severe mental illness (SMI)	NHS England	Mental health	From April 2024, physical health checks for people with severe mental illness is collected directly from General Practices via GPES. The first quarterly publication from the new collection covered quarter 1 (April to June 2024) and was published in September 2024.
Premature mortality in adults with severe mental illness (SMI)	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will continue publishing indicators on premature and excess premature mortality, and pilot moving analysis reports on indicators used and interpretation to a ‘Statistical Commentary’ format. DHSC will review the methodology for the indicators with input from NHS England.
Psychological therapies, annual report on the use of IAPT services	NHS England	Mental health	NHS England will discuss any future changes with users.
Severe mental illness (SMI) profile	DHSC	Mental health	‘Severe mental illness (SMI)’ profile and ‘Common mental health disorders (CMHD)’ profile will merge. DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries, and will undertake end user engagement through focus groups.
Suicide prevention profile	DHSC	Mental health	DHSC will review indicators and geographical boundaries to reduce duplication.
Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK	ONS	Mortality	ONS will publish as a headline only release going forward.
Climate-related mortality, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS is broadening this publication to extend the time period to 2023 and to consider other causes of death (for example, cardiovascular, respiratory) and demographic characteristics (for example, age, sex, deprivation). ONS will then consider similar developments for reporting heat and cold-related morbidity using hospital admissions data.
Deaths of care home residents, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will pause publishing these statistics until the required development work is completed. Once complete, ONS will continue to publish these statistics regularly. ONS will continue to publish statistics on deaths in care homes as part of the ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’ release.
Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will continue to publish ‘Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales’, but will undertake an improvement programme to provide more robust statistics to help better meet user needs.
Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn annually. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK	ONS	Mortality	ONS will implement the merge for outputs ‘Deaths registered by area of usual residence, UK’ and ‘Vital statistics in the UK’ for the next release.
Deaths registered in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will initially keep ‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales’ as a headline only release. In the longer term, ONS will explore alternative ways of presenting this output such as dashboards.
Deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Excess mortality during heat-periods	UKHSA and ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Excess mortality in England and English regions	DHSC	Mortality	For this publication, the baseline period is now based on trends in mortality rates in the most recent 5 years, rather than the 5 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. DHSC is now also presenting estimates by month, rather than week, in the new, post-pandemic version of its excess mortality report.
Heat mortality monitoring report	UKHSA	Mortality	UKHSA is exploring the implementation of additional geographical breakdowns in future reports, but due to the statistical uncertainty in estimating heat-associated deaths and the small numbers involved (fewer than 500 heat-associated deaths in each region in summer 2023), it is unlikely that UKHSA will be able to present data for a single year at local authority level.
Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will merge the annual ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’ output with ‘Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales’ and ‘Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales’. There will be 2 releases of the merged output. The first will contain both figures for death registrations in England and Wales and for the number of registered deaths without rates which will be published in April or May after the reporting year. Once population estimates become available later in the year, the release will be updated with mortality rates, likely in autumn. This autumn release will also include an additional dataset with registration delay data. This merge was implemented in the ‘Deaths registered in England and Wales’: 2023 release that was published in October 2024.
Mortality profile	DHSC	Mortality	DHSC has already taken steps to increase the number of indicators included this profile, increasing the number of causes of deaths for which trends in mortality rates are now available. In February 2024, the profile was expanded to include 18 new indicators, 14 of which had previously been reported in either NHS England’s Mortality Compendium or DHSC’s ‘Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool’.
Quarterly suicide death registrations in England	ONS	Mortality	ONS will publish as a headline only release rather than data only.
Suicides in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Summary hospital-level mortality indicator (SHMI) - deaths associated with hospitalisation, England	NHS England	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages	ONS	Mortality	ONS will implement the merge for outputs Deaths registered by area of usual residence and Vital statistics in the UK for the next release.
Weekly all-cause mortality surveillance	UKHSA	Mortality	No changes are planned for this publication.
Winter mortality in England and Wales	ONS	Mortality	ONS will complete a review of this publication and publish a proposal on the future of these statistics.
Changes in the weight status of children between the first and final years of primary school	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	No changes are planned for this publication.
National Child Measurement Programme headline report	NHS England	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025.
National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025.
National Diet and Nutrition Survey	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	This survey is currently published every 4 years by DHSC but will move to an annual report which coincides with an increase in the sample size to deliver robust annual estimates. The first annual report is expected to be published in 2026. These changes were planned outside of this consultation.
Obesity profile	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘National Child Measurement Programme headline report’, ‘Obesity profile’ and the ‘National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP): changes in the prevalence of child obesity’ will merge and this will take place over the next 2 years as follows: 1. The current individual reports using 2023 to 2024 NCMP data have been produced and were published at the same time on 5 November 2024. 2. The 2024 to 2025 reports will merged into one report DHSC will publish in autumn 2025. The ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’ will merge and DHSC will consolidate the content to include important indicators on diet as well. Prior to the merger, further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front pages of the obesity and physical activity profiles.
Physical activity data tool	DHSC	Obesity, physical activity and diet	The ‘Physical activity data tool’ and ‘Obesity profile’ will merge and DHSC will consolidate the content to include important indicators on diet as well. Prior to the merger, further work to understand user need is required. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front pages of the obesity and physical activity profiles.
Health Survey for England	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	Fieldwork is underway for the 2024 ‘Health Survey for England’ which will be published in 2025. Given the size of this survey and range of outputs, it is being reviewed and discussed separately. NHS England will publish the outcome as a standalone web page linked to this.
Local health	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHCS will update the current indicators in the Fingertips tool with the latest timepoints once data are available and will close down the Geoclip tool. The Fingertips platform is being redeveloped; this will include the development of the mapping capabilities and will aim to incorporate the most valued aspects of the functionality from Geoclip.
NICE technology appraisals in the NHS in England (Innovation Scorecard)	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	The NHSBSA published its first version of this publication in April 2024 and will continue to do so every 6 months.
NHS Outcomes Framework indicators	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	NHS England will publish the revised framework from winter 2024 to 2025 onwards. The revised publication will have an overarching web page with links to the data for each of the 5 HES based indicators, along with a data sources spreadsheet containing weblinks for the remaining indicators. This is the same format as the interim ‘NHS Outcomes Framework indicators’ published in April 2024.
Public Health Outcomes Framework	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	The indicators in the PHOF will be refreshed to remove those where the data are no-longer available, where a single year measure has replaced a 3-year measure and to make minor methods changes. The intention is to complete a separate review of the PHOF. DHSC will review the current set of indicators to take account of the government’s public health and prevention priorities. The frequency of the PHOF updates will reduce from 4 times per year to 3 to consolidate the update process.
Wider determinants of health	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	Some changes have already been made to the indicators presented in this publication, based on previous user engagement. Indicators that were not relevant to health or were not measuring core wider or social determinants of health were removed. DHSC does not plan to make any further changes at this time unless they are a result of the forthcoming PHOF review.
Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health (WICH) tool	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC will formally stop updates to the WICH tool.
Health trends in England	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC launched this publication in May 2024 and continues to release updates on a monthly basis. The longer-term intention is to incorporate this into Fingertips as it is redeveloped.
Productive healthy ageing profile	DHSC	Overarching health and social care outputs	DHSC will formally discontinue this profile.
Local authority health profiles	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	The publication has 2 elements: a HTML report and an online profile. DHSC will continue to update the online profile but will no longer maintain the HTML report. DHSC will archive the HTML reports and will make them available on request.
Health profile for England reports	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	There are no current plans to reinstate these reports.
Health index	ONS	Overarching health and social care outputs	ONS will seek funding to continue the Health index work, and regularly review its priority, with the aim to resume publication. Any future work will also explore developing the statistics in line with stakeholder feedback.
Clinical commissioning group outcomes indicator set (CCG OIS)	NHS England	Overarching health and social care outputs	This publication was stopped in 2022 following the abolition of CCGs.
Public health dashboard	Previously published by PHE	Overarching health and social care outputs	There are no plans to reinstate updates to the dashboard. Users will still have access to the archived data and the page will include signposting to indicators that remain active in other Fingertips profiles.
Appointments in general practice	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	For this publication, NHS England will carry out a streamlining of the publication, reducing the number of data files each month from 90 to 21. NHS England will reduce timeseries from 30 months to 18 months on each monthly release, and publish all data at practice level, with mappings to allow for aggregation. This reduces the number of CSV files produced from 78 to 19. It will also include a single file showing the daily count of appointments at sub-ICB level, to replace the 30 current files.
GP patient survey	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHS England brought dental reporting into more ‘GP patient survey’ reporting outputs this year. NHS England will ensure the general practice and dentistry sections are presented separately and highlight the most important issues in accompanying narratives and bulletins. When NHS England next reviews the content of the GPPS, it will consult with a wide range of stakeholders before making any significant changes, in line with the engagement done during previous redevelopments of the survey. In order to maintain trends in the data, NHS England plans to avoid further significant redevelopments to the survey wherever possible over the next few years.
Adult oral health survey	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Community services statistics	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Dependency forming medicines - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Fit notes issued by GP practices, England	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHS England will review caveats and supporting documentation to ensure they are as clear as possible on the limitations of the data.
General pharmaceutical services - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
GP in-hours syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
GP out-of-hours syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
GP profiles for patients	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Health and care of people with learning disabilities	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hormone replacement therapy - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Hospital tooth extractions in 0 to 19 year olds	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Medicines used in mental health - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Dental statistics - England	NHSBSA (previously published by NHS England)	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user. For this publication, the NHSBSA will be aligning methodologies used to assign dental activity to a time period with the monthly management information published on the NHSBSA Open Data Portal. This will lead to greater coherence in dental reporting to allow greater scrutiny as we move towards system recovery. NHSBSA will be publishing a supporting statistical narrative with the publication. This will draw out important measures and provide context and analysis of trends in dental data. This will include measures across geographies and looking at patient centred measures.
NHS payments to general practice, England	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Patients registered at a GP practice	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Prescribing costs in hospitals and the community - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Prescribing for diabetes - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Prescription cost analysis - England	NHSBSA	Primary care, community health and oral health	NHSBSA will review signposting between publications and make improvements if needed. NHSBSA will continue to produce supporting statistical narratives to accompany its publications. NHSBSA will also look to introduce interactive dashboards to support its publications where this would maximise value for the user.
Primary care dementia data	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Quality and Outcomes Framework	NHS England	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	DHSC will explore which measures are helpful to include in the Fingertips ‘Dental services’ profile, and which measures will produce the most insight for users.
National general practice profiles	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Oral health survey of 5 year old children	DHSC	Primary care, community health and oral health	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on women’s smoking status at time of delivery: England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	NHS England will take forward and implement the proposal to change the data source for this publication from the SATOD to the MSDS from 2025 to 2026 onwards.
Adult smoking habits in the UK	ONS	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Local alcohol profiles for England (LAPE) (renamed ‘Alcohol profile’)	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this is carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Local tobacco control profiles (renamed ‘Smoking profile’)	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	Further work to understand user need is required for this publication. Once this has been carried out, DHSC will place a more detailed plan on the front page of the profile.
Smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on NHS stop smoking services in England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Statistics on public health, England	NHS England	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	NHS England actioned the proposal to remove charts that use DHSC data and continue to signpost to the DHSC Fingertips tool for ‘Statistics on public health’ within the 2022 to 2023 publication published in December 2023 as a pilot. NHS England will be continue this in future publications. NHS England, DHSC and ONS will continue to work collaboratively to investigate the potential of more coherence in terms of publication dates and signposting to each other’s work, and whether any further duplication of work could be removed.
Substance misuse treatment for adults	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Substance misuse treatment for young people	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Substance misuse treatment in secure settings	DHSC	Smoking, drugs and alcohol	No changes are planned for this publication.
Critical care bed capacity and urgent operations cancelled	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will discontinue this publication and improve the signposting to ‘Urgent and emergency care daily situation reports’ from the old critical care beds webpage.
Patient level activity and costing	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will discontinue this publication and merge the content with the ‘National cost collection for the NHS’ data publication.
A&E attendances and emergency admissions	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will improve the description of the scope of this publication on the website and improve signposting to linked publications. NHS England will explore opportunities to increase the content of the dataset, where appropriate.
Ambulance quality indicators	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Bed availability and occupancy	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Compendium: emergency readmissions to hospital within 30 days of discharge	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Emergency department syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Hospital accident and emergency activity	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	NHS England will improve signposting to the monthly A&E performance and activity publication in this publication
Integrated urgent care aggregate data collection (IUC ADC)	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
National ambulance syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
NHS 111 patient experience survey	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Provisional accident and emergency quality indicators for England	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Remote health advice syndromic surveillance	UKHSA	Urgent, emergency and acute care	No changes are planned for this publication.
Virtual ward capacity and occupancy	NHS England	Urgent, emergency and acute care	There are no immediate changes planned for this publication. NHS England is currently developing a record-level national minimum dataset which, once implemented, would improve granularity in the data available to users.
General practitioner workforce in alternative settings	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will formally discontinue this publication. The series publication page will be updated by the end of 2024 to clarify that this series has been discontinued.
Independent healthcare provider workforce statistics	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will re-consider the proposal to discontinue this publication and undertake a discovery exercise later in 2024 to 2025 with the aim of identifying ways of increasing participation, investigating the ability of NHS England to require provision of data, identify a different collection tool and identify the important areas stakeholders are interested in.
Data on written complaints in the NHS	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England implemented changes to this publication for the 2022 to 2023 reporting year. The changes centred on reducing the amount of commentary and published bulletin tables that accompanied the release as well as removing tables which pertained to complaints per head of population, and introducing more detailed important facts within the primary and secondary care sectors.
Dental earnings and expenses estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication and simplified the timeseries and HTML publication.
Dentists’ working patterns, motivation and morale	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication.
Estates returns information collection	NHS England	Workforce and estates	No changes are planned for this publication.
General practice workforce	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not merge the ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’ publications or introduce rolling timeseries. NHS England will investigate the suggestion to include statistics on the uptake of retention schemes and data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs.
GP earnings and expenses estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has reduced supporting commentary for this publication. NHS England will investigate including an ethnicity breakdown on the GP earnings analysis to further inform review body on DDRB reviews.
National NHS staff survey	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England regularly reviews the content and outputs based on the ‘National NHS staff survey’. As part of this NHS England reviews any elements no longer needed.
NHS sickness absence rates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England has included links to sitrep reports within the related links section of this publication. NHS England will engage with colleagues who produce these reports and update commentary to explain how to use, if appropriate.
NHS staff earnings estimates	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will consider the full contents of this publication, taking into account requests for the inclusion of mean annual earnings by pay bands and tables used by the annual pay review body. This will also include a review of the methodology.
NHS surplus land	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will review the approach to data quality-related outputs in this publication, moving them to HTML format by the end of 2024.
NHS vacancy statistics, England	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not, as proposed, remove statistics that are based on the Trac and Electronic Staff Record (ESR) data from this publication
NHS workforce statistics	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will remove Excel pivot tables but will continue to provide the underlying data in CSV format and within the bulletin tables. NHS England will retire the ‘Redundancies table’ from the ‘Reason for leaving’ series and retire ‘National time series in NHS and core orgs’ summary tables. NHS England will not, as proposed, reduce the ‘Equality and diversity in trust and core orgs’ to every 6 months. NHS England will also explore the feasibility of developing further metrics based on the feedback, and review definitions and data descriptions such as those relating to staff movement. Additionally, when the methodology and content of reports is revisited, NHS England will consider the statistics produced by the UK nations and align where possible or explain differences.
Patient-led assessments of the care environment (PLACE)	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will review and move the data quality information to HTML format on the release pages for this publication. In addition, the PowerPoint summary presentation will be removed and replaced with an interactive Power BI report.
Primary care network workforce	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will not merge the ‘General practice workforce’ and ‘Primary care network workforce’ publications or introduce rolling timeseries. NHS England will investigate the suggestion to include statistics on the uptake of retention schemes and data on the recruitment of newly qualified GPs.
Primary care workforce quarterly update	NHS England	Workforce and estates	NHS England will monitor the ongoing need for a 2-month reporting lag in ad-hoc locum figures for this publication.

Seventeen of the published data tables are the ones required to populate the tables and produce the summary in the online publication. Following feedback from members of the Data Delivery Action Group (DDAG), an additional 9 tables have been included to provide users with the most relevant data. Any data tables that are no longer published can still be created using the published CSV data.

Table 8: published gross expenditure

Table type	Table	Sheet	Description
Summary figures regarding adult social care activity and finance	T2	SUMMARY	Summary figures regarding adult social care activity, year on year comparison, 2021 to 2022, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024
Summary figures regarding adult social care activity and finance	T3	LTS, STS, OTHER	Expenditure and income, by finance type and finance description, 2023 to 2024
Summary figures regarding adult social care activity and finance	T4	LTS, STS, OTHER, GDP (HM Treasury)	Gross Current Expenditure in cash and real terms, 2005 to 2006 to 2023 to 2024
Summary figures regarding adult social care activity and finance	T5	LTS, STS, OTHER	Expenditure, by finance description, year on year comparison, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024
Summary figures regarding adult social care activity and finance	T6	LTS, STS, OTHER	Income, by finance description, year on year comparison, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024
Requests for support	T8	STS001	Number of requests for support received from new clients, by age band and route of access, 2023 to 2024
Requests for support	T9	STS001	Number of requests for support received from new clients, by route of access, age band and what happened next, 2023 to 2024
Overall gross current expenditure	T14	LTS, STS, OTHER	Gross Current Expenditure, by care type, 2023 to 2024
Overall gross current expenditure	T15	LTS, STS, OTHER	Gross Current Expenditure, by care type, year on year comparison, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024
Overall gross current expenditure	T19	LTS, STS	Gross Current Expenditure on long and short term care for clients aged 18 to 64, by care type and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Overall gross current expenditure	T20	LTS, STS	Gross Current Expenditure on long and short term care for clients aged 65 and over, by care type and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Short term care to maximise independence (ST-Max)	T21	STS002A	Number of completed episodes of ST-Max for new clients, by what happened next and age band, 2023 to 2024
Short term care to maximise independence (ST-Max)	T27	STS002B	Number of completed episodes of ST-Max for existing clients, by what happened next and age band, 2023 to 2024
Short term care to maximise independence (ST-Max)	T28	STS002A, STS002B	Number of completed episodes of ST-Max per client, by age band, 2023 to 2024
Gross current expenditure on short term care	T29	STS	Gross Current Expenditure on short term care, by purpose, age band and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Long term care	T33	LTS001A, LTS001B, LTS001C	Number of clients accessing long term support during the year, at the end of the year (31 March) and for more than 12 months at the end of the year (31 March), by age band, 2023 to 2024
Long term care	T34	LTS001A	Number of clients accessing long term support during the year, by age band and support setting, 2023 to 2024
Long term care	T37	LTS001B	Number of clients accessing long term support at the end of the year, by age band and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Long term care	T38	LTS001B	Number of clients accessing long term support at the end of the year, by age band and support setting, 2023 to 2024
Long term care	T40	LTS001B	Number of clients accessing long term support at the year end, by age band and cost status, 2023 to 2024
Gross current expenditure on long term care	T43	LTS	Gross Current Expenditure on long term care for clients aged 18 to 64, by support setting, 2023 to 2024
Gross current expenditure on long term care	T44	LTS	Gross Current Expenditure on long term care for clients aged 65 and over, by support setting, 2023 to 2024
Gross current expenditure on long term care	T46	OTHER	Gross Current Expenditure on other (not long or short term) social care, by primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Support provided to carers	T47	LTS003	Support provided to carers during the year, by type of support provided, 2023 to 2024
Reviews	T50	LTS001C, LTS002B	Unplanned and planned reviews during the year of clients that have been accessing long term support for more than 12 months at the end of the year (31 March), 2023 to 2024
Unit costs	T52	LTS, ACTIVITY	Unit costs for clients accessing long term support, by support setting and age band, year on year comparison, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024

Table 9: published net expenditure

Table Type	Table	Source	Description
Current expenditure annual trends	T4	LTS, STS, OTHER, GDP (HM Treasury)	Net current expenditure in cash and real terms, 2005 to 2006 to 2023 to 2024
Care type	T14	LTS, STS, OTHER	Net current expenditure, by care type, 2023 to 2024
Care type	T15	LTS, STS, OTHER	Net current expenditure, by care type, year on year comparison, 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024
Age and primary support reason	T19	LTS, STS	Net current expenditure on long and short term care for clients aged 18 to 64, by care type and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Age and primary support reason	T20	LTS, STS	Net current expenditure on long and short term care for clients aged 65 and over, by care type and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Age and primary support reason	T29	STS	Net current expenditure on short term care, by purpose, age band and primary support reason, 2023 to 2024
Other	T46	OTHER	Net current expenditure on other (not long or short term) social care, by primary support reason, 2023 to 2024

Question 28

Annex 3: Adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF)

Accepted Answer

Table 10: changes to ASCOF

Publication output 2024 to 2025	Summary	Comments
Report (PDF)	Change or reduction to previous publication	- Reduced commentary - 1E, 1F, 1H and 4B indicators will be removed - new indicators (4B, 6A, 6B) will be added
Report: appendices (PDF)	Change or reduction to previous publication	- Reduced commentary - 1E, 1F, 1H and 4B indicators will be removed - new indicators (4B, 6A, 6B) will be added
DQ report	Change or reduction to previous publication	As the DQ report contains information from other publications, this is likely to be a shorter summary
DQ annex (XLSX)	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced in line with changes to the DQ report
Power BI dashboard	Change or reduction to previous publication	- 1E, 1F, 1H and 4B indicators will be removed - new indicators (4B, 6A, 6B) will added
Data tables (XLSX)	Change or reduction to previous publication	- 1E, 1F, 1H and 4B indicators will be removed - monthly 1F and 1H measures will be removed - monthly 2B ‘Hospital episode statistics’ will be removed - ONS area codes will be removed (available from ONS) - new indicators (4B, 6A, 6B) will added
Open data CSV (CSV)	Change or reduction to previous publication	- 1E, 1F, 1H and 4B indicators will be removed - new indicators (4B, 6A, 6B) will added
Methodology and guidance (PDF)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Webpage update	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable

Question 29

Annex 4: Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS)

Accepted Answer

Table 11: changes to ‘Personal social services ASCS’

Publication output 2024 to 2025	Summary	Comments
Report (PDF)	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced commentary
Power BI dashboard	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Methodology and further information	No change from the previous publication	No change to the methodology
DQ report	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced
DQ tables (XLSX)	No longer included	Reduced in line with changes to the DQ report
Data tables (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Time series annex (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
CSV data (CSV)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
CSV metadata (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Tables for report charts (XLSX)	No longer included	Not applicable

Question 30

Annex 5: Personal social services survey of adult carers in England (SACE)

Accepted Answer

Table 12: changes to ‘Personal social services survey of adult carers in England (SACE)’

Publication output 2024 to 2025	Summary	Comments
Report (PDF)	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced commentary
Power BI dashboard	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Methodology and further information	No change from the previous publication	No change to the methodology
DQ report	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced
DQ tables (XLSX)	No longer included	Reduced in line with changes to the DQ report
Data tables (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Time series annex (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
CSV data (CSV)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
CSV metadata (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Tables for report charts (XLSX)	No longer included	Not applicable

Publication output 2024 to 2025	Summary	Comments
Report (online publication)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Power BI dashboard	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
DQ report	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
DQ tables (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Data tables - Gross Expenditure (XLSX)	Change or reduction to previous publication	55 data tables - reduced to 26
Data tables - Net Expenditure (XLSX)	Change or reduction to previous publication	16 data tables - reduced to 7
CSV data (CSV)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Webpage update	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable

Publication output 2024 to 2025	Summary	Comments
Report (PDF)	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced commentary (29 to 22 pages) Removed: - statistical testing of every question versus every question - every question versus demographic group Time series only used to identify findings
Power BI Dashboard	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Methodology and further information	No change from the previous publication	No change to the methodology
Data quality (DQ) report	Change or reduction to previous publication	Reduced (21 to 16 pages) Sections removed: - comments or feedback from councils on response rates - statistical tests on help completing the survey - examples of additional questions - reviewing materials is included in SACE DQ report but will need to be removed for ASCS - reminders - which councils did not use them and the statistical tests - review of comments in data return and summary of issues presented - statistical tests on translated questions
DQ annex (XLSX)	No longer included	Reduced in line with changes to the DQ report
Annex tables (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Time series annex (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
CSV data (CSV)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Data dictionary (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Tables for report charts (XLSX)	No longer included	Not applicable
ASCOF scores (CSV)	No longer included	Published with ASCOF later in the year
SACE ASCOF data dictionary (PDF)	No longer included	Published with ASCOF later in the year
Carer quality of life scores by health condition of the cared-for person (XLSX)	No change from the previous publication	Not applicable
Online pilot report (PDF)	No longer included	This was a one-off for 2022 and is not part of the normal publication

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Introduction

Total responses

Engagement

Overview of methodology

Quantitative analysis

Qualitative analysis

General feedback and overarching themes

General feedback section

Process of finding statistics

Format of data

Dashboards and interactive tools

Commentary around statistical products

Prioritisation of quality dimensions

Response to general feedback

Proposal to publish a higher proportion of outputs in a dashboard or interactive tool format

Proposal to reduce the level of detailed commentary and reduce the frequency commentary is provided alongside statistical outputs

Overarching actions

Data availability

Improving the process of findings statistics

Accessibility and presentation of data

Format of data

Statistical topic areas: feedback and actions

Overview

1. Adult social care

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Adult social care activity and finance report, England’, which contains ASCFR and SALT

Adult social care in England, monthly statistics

Adult social care statistics in England: an overview

Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England

Deferred payments agreements

Estimating the size of the self-funding population in the community, England

‘Guardianship under the Mental Health Act, 1983’, ‘Mental Capacity Act 2005, deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS)’ and ‘Safeguarding adults (SAC), England’

Life expectancy in care homes (England and Wales)

Measures from the adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF), England

Personal social services adult social care survey (ASCS), England

Personal social services survey of adult carers in England (SACE)

Registered blind and partially sighted people

2. Cancer

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Cancer registration statistics, England’ and ‘Case-mix adjusted percentage of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 in England’

‘Cancer survival in England’ and ‘Index of cancer survival’

Emergency presentations of cancer: quarterly data

‘National cancer patient experience survey’ and ‘Under 16 cancer patient experience survey’

Routes to diagnosis

3. Child, maternal and reproductive health

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

Birth statistics, produced by ONS

Breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks after birth

Child and infant mortality in England and Wales

Child development outcomes at 2 to 2 and a half years

‘Child education’, ‘Child and maternal health profiles’ and ‘Admissions for children with long-term conditions’

Female genital mutilation

Sexual and reproductive health: annual update

Unexplained deaths in infancy, England and Wales

Other publications

4. COVID-19 and COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations

Broader context for these products

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

Coronavirus as recorded in primary care

Other publications

Cross-publication proposal to refine methodology notes and background information

Cross-publication proposal to make data available at the lowest geography possible

5. Disability, learning disability and autism

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

Autism statistics

Learning disability profiles

Learning disability services monthly statistics

Outcomes for disabled people in the UK

6. Elective activity

Contextual information

Future of statistical products in this area

‘Breast screening programme, England’ and ‘Cervical screening programme, England’

Cancelled elective operations

Consultant-led outpatient referrals