Authority Diary - January 2010
The Authority Board met in London on 22 January 2010. The Board considered an outline draft of the National Statistician’s statement Statistics Matter and agreed that the Chair should send an open letter to the leaders of the major UK political parties setting out what statistical policies the Authority would wish to see in place in the longer term to strengthen public confidence in official statistics.
The Authority also agreed that the change from the Standard Variable Rate (SVR) to Average Effective Rate (AER) as the measure of mortgage payments in the Retail Prices Index (RPI) should be implemented from the February 2010 Index to be published in March 2010. The meeting discussed proposals for non-Crown bodies to be brought within the scope of the Statistics and Registration Service Act and the Board also discussed the draft Census ( England ) Regulations.
At the January meeting, the Authority approved the publication of its Monitoring Report reviewing the statutory arrangements for pre-release access to official statistics in the UK, and considered a draft specification for a future report on the adequacy of environmental statistics in informing public debate and government policy. The meeting received a progress report on the Assessment programme and endorsed proposals for reporting breaches of the Code of Practice.
The minutes and papers for this meeting will be published on the website shortly via About the Authority > Boards and Committees documentation.
The Authority's Committee for Official Statistics met in London on 12 January 2010. The Committee received reports from the National Statistician and the Head of Assessment, and considered its future role and how the Committee membership might be expanded to include external members.
On 18 January, the Authority held an open meeting at the Royal Statistical Society in London to discuss the interim findings of its report Overcoming barriers to trust in crime statistics: England and Wales. A note of the meeting is available on the website under Monitoring & Assessment > Monitoring reports.
On 29 January, the Authority Chair, Sir Michael Scholar, wrote to the leaders of the major UK political parties setting out the policy priorities of the Statistics Authority. The correspondence is available under Reports & Correspondence > Correspondence.
If you have any questions about the work of the UK Statistics Authority, or if you have any comments or issues that you want to raise with us, please email authority.enquiries@statistics.gov.uk.
or write to us at:
Statistics House
Myddelton Street
London
EC1R 1UW
or telephone our enquiry line on 0845 604 1857.
