Accredited official statistics

5. Indicator development plan

Updated 10 December 2024

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2024

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/england-biodiversity-indicators/indicator-development-plan

1. Reviewing indicators

During 2022, the Biodiversity Indicators production team conducted a review of the UK and England indicator suites. The indicators have each been developed at different times, by different teams of experts and have continued to evolve in different ways over time. As such some inconsistencies existed, and it wasn’t fully clear to what extent each indicator adhered to the Code of Practice for Statistics and the 3 pillars of Trustworthiness, Value and Quality.

Each indicator was reviewed against the Code of Practice for Statistics and the statistical methods used were reviewed to check for consistency and suitability. The findings from these reviews have informed a development plan for each indicator, which has been published on each indicator page. We also have a development plan for the indicators as a whole, which we are publishing here to encourage input from our users and data providers.

1.1 Development plan for the Biodiversity Indicators as a whole:

  1. Develop new indicators to support the UK’s reporting requirements for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It is expected that these new indicators will include:
    • Red List of Ecosystems
    • Extent of natural ecosystems
    • Red List Index
    • The proportion of populations within species with an effective population size (Ne) > 500
    • Services provided by ecosystems
    • Area under restoration
    • Index of coastal eutrophication potential
    • Pesticide Aggregated Total Applied Toxicity (ATAT)
    • Average share of the built-up area of cities that is green/blue space for public use for all
    • Positive incentives in place to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use
    • Value of subsidies and other incentives harmful to biodiversity
  2. Review and update desk instructions for each of the indicators. Included in this, is ensuring our data providers have adequate desk instructions.
  3. Continue to develop and improve the Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP) based workflow introduced during 2024.
  4. Review the mechanisms for gathering data. Automation may be able to help in some instances.
  5. Build upon work done in 2024 to continue to improve the commentary for all appropriate indicators, simplify the language used to be accessible to a lay audience, avoid the use of jargon and terminology. Review consistency in the language used across all indicators.
  6. Build upon work done in 2024 to continue to review the approach and consistency of the assessment methods applied across indicators including the length of time series, the need for a medium-term assessment, value of the latest-year assessment, use of smoothing, use of 3% rule of thumb and threshold for change.
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