non-Crown Bodies

The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 defines 'official statistics' as those produced by Crown bodies. The Act also makes provision for Ministers to set-out in secondary legislation which non-Crown bodies may also be regarded as producers of 'official statistics'.

If the statistics produced by a non-Crown body are 'official statistics', this means that:

• those statistics can be monitored, scrutinised and assessed by the UK Statistics Authority, who can subsequently comment on them
• those statistics will be eligible for assessment to become 'National Statistics', and
• the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (including the rules and principles for pre-release access) will apply to statistics produced by those bodies. However, unless those statistics are designated as National Statistics, compliance with the Code is encouraged, but not mandatory.

A list of non-Crown bodies that are currently regarded as producers of official statistics is set out in the Schedule to the Official Statistics Order 2010, and a list of non-Crown bodies in Scotland is set out in the Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008 and the Official Statistics (Scotland) Amendment Order 2010.

A list of official statistics produced by non-Crown bodies as at March 2012 is available via the Download on the right-hand side of this page.