What the official data actually says

The product standard

Every statistic on this site can be followed along one trail:

1. Map
2. area
3. statistic
4. raw count
5. rate
6. numerator
7. denominator
8. formula
9. official dataset
10. exact source
11. methodology
12. limitations

Don't trust us. Check us.

Every controversial statistic resolves to one of four outcomes:

1. the official figure
2. a reproducible calculation from official figures
3. the data is incomplete and here is what is missing
4. the government does not publish enough to answer

We never claim that a figure is withheld on purpose. We classify how accessible it is and say what is missing.

Areas

• Ethnicity and criminal justiceIn progress

  Exact criminal-justice measures by ethnicity (stop and search, arrests, prosecutions, convictions, custody, prison population, use of force, reoffending) from Home Office and Ministry of Justice tables, with rates per 100,000 calculated against Census 2021 ethnic-group populations and every numerator, denominator and vintage shown.

  • Ethnicity and the criminal justice system (in progress)
  • Stop and search by ethnicity (official table)
  • Prison population by ethnicity (official table)
  • Data recipes for each derived rate (in progress)
  • 12 data gaps
• Religion and demographic changePlanned

  Census 2011 and 2021 religion and ethnic-group counts for every local authority, MSOA and LSOA, from the ONS Nomis API, with change shown in people, in percentage terms and in percentage points of share, and the absence of any official religion series between censuses stated.

  • Religion in England and Wales (planned)
  • Population topic hub
  • 10 data gaps
• Places of worshipPlanned

  Planning applications for places of worship read from the MHCLG Planning Data platform and local planning authority registers, classified only from the official proposal text, with application, permission, refusal and confirmed completion kept separate and the authority coverage shown.

  • Places of worship (planned)
  • 3 data gaps
• PlanningPlanned

  Planning application records by authority from planning.data.gov.uk, with the number of authorities supplying data, the share of England covered and the latest update per authority, so that no figure is extrapolated to a national total.

  • Planning applications by authority (planned)
  • 1 data gap
• Government data gapsLive

  Every question this site has been asked of official data, classified by what is actually published: available, derivable, partial, fragmented, FOI required, not published, not collected, restricted for disclosure, or unknown, with what exists, what is missing and which authority holds it.

  • Data gaps register
  • Challenges and corrections
  • Sources and accessibility levels
  • 17 data gaps
• FOI-derived datasetsIn progress

  Datasets assembled from Freedom of Information responses where no publication exists, with each request, authority, deadline, response and released file recorded, and coverage shown by authority so that a partial set of responses is never presented as a national figure.

  • FOI programme
  • FOI register (JSON)
• Cost of living and household budgetsIn progress

  Household spending averages by household type, income decile and region from the ONS Living Costs and Food Survey, local rents from the Price Index of Private Rents, Band D council tax by billing authority and average house prices, assembled into Civometry estimates that state the geographic level of every input and are labelled as estimates, never as official figures about any household.

  • What does it cost to live here? (Civometry estimate)
  • Cost of living by local authority (official figures)
  • Where does our income sit? (official deciles)
  • How much does a child cost? (official spending gap)
  • What is my personal inflation rate? (Civometry calculation)
  • How much will energy cost? (DESNZ consumption at the Ofgem cap)
  • 5 data gaps

Source accessibility levels

Each registered source carries a level from 1 to 7 describing how its figures reach us. The level says nothing about why a publisher chose a format. Levels 4 and above describe figures rather than files: a level 4 figure is one we calculate from two or more official datasets and document as a data recipe; levels 5 to 7 are recorded in the data-gaps register, not against a source.

Local recorded-crime rates per 1,000 residents are a level 4 figure: data.police.uk street-level counts (level 2) joined to the ONS mid-year population estimates (level 3) through the ONS LSOA lookup. The population year and the coverage of every force are shown on each local page.

Data gaps

47 questions are classified in the data-gaps register:

Freedom of Information

Where a figure is held but not published, we ask for it and record the request, the deadline, the response and every released file. No requests have been sent yet; the candidates are listed on the FOI page. See /foi.

Challenges and corrections

Any statistic can be challenged on methodological grounds: the official source, the numerator, the denominator, the geographic or category mapping, the period, the formula or the interpretation. Accepted challenges produce a public correction that records the original value, the corrected value, the affected geography and the reason, and the original is never silently replaced. 1 correction published. See /transparency/challenges.