Official Statistics

Quality report: Alcohol Bulletin

Updated 28 May 2021

1. Introduction

This quality report relates to the Alcohol Bulletin National Statistics. The purpose is to provide users with information about the quality of the outputs as set out by the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

The Alcohol Bulletin has been published quarterly since August 2016 and on GOV.UK since August 2019.

Archive versions of the Alcohol Bulletin published on GOV.UK after August 2019 are no longer hosted on GOV.UK and are instead available via the UK Government Web Archive, from the National Archives.

Archive versions of the Alcohol Bulletin published between 2008 and August 2019 are found on the UK Trade Info website.

The bulletin contains statistics on historical receipts and clearances for all 4 alcohol duties: Wine Duty, Spirits Duty, Beer Duty, and Cider Duty, alongside statistics for spirits production by UK distilleries.

Accompanying these statistics is commentary intended to explain trends to users and how these trends interact with external events, alcohol duty rates and other alcohol policies in the UK.

Included duty receipts statistics are up to the latest full month before the bulletin release. Statistics relating to clearances and production are one month behind that of duty receipts.

The bulletin is produced by analysts within the Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence (KAI) directorate of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Thorough quality assurance (QA) procedures are followed for each bulletin before it is signed off by senior management and sent to GOV.UK for publication.

2. Relevance

The Alcohol Bulletin contains data on historical clearances, receipts and duty rates of alcohol products in the UK. The bulletin makes it clear that it contains information only about alcohol products on which duty has been paid.

The Alcohol Bulletin is a National Statistics publication and contains a commentary section on recent patterns in total alcohol receipts and receipts by products over the last 3 financial years (including the current year). It also contains a commentary section on trends in receipts of each product over the last 5 financial years.

The commentary and content of the bulletin are regularly reviewed to ensure they remain relevant to user needs.

3. Accuracy and reliability

The data used to produce these publications is exhaustive, and covers all alcohol sold under UK jurisdiction which is subject to excise duty. This means that data on clearances and receipts refers to all alcohol sold legally, with the exception of duty-free alcohol, which is not counted for this purpose as by definition duty is not paid on these goods.

Deferments and late returns can influence the data used for the publications. For that reason, the last 3 months of data at any given time are labelled as ‘provisional’, although revisions tend to be minor. Where there are revisions they are clearly marked as ‘revised’, and information is given as to the reasons and scale of the revisions if appropriate.

4. Timeliness and punctuality

The bulletin is published one month after the end of the reporting period for receipts. That is, the bulletin relating to alcohol duty received in January is published at the end of February. The bulletin takes around one week to produce, with the data not being available until after the middle of the month. The remaining time is spent quality assuring the information in the bulletin.

In line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, these statistics are pre-announced on GOV.UK.

HMRC also publishes an annual publication plan on GOV.UK.

There have been no incidents of late publication of the bulletin since the previous Alcohol Bulletin Quality Report was produced in 2013 which is available through the UK Government Web Archive from the National Archive.

5. Accessibility and clarity

The data is publicly available within the Alcohol Bulletin and is published at 9:30 am on the pre-announced date of release.

The Alcohol Bulletin commentary is published in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format, as generated within internal UK government HTML Markdown software. The Alcohol Bulletin data tables which accompany the commentary are published in Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) format.

Accompanying the bulletin is a background and references document which includes:

• definitions for alcohol duties and products

• details on how alcohol duties are levied and paid

• methodology for producing alcohol duties statistics

• statistical quality information, including HMRC’s rounding policy

• hyperlinks to relevant pages where bulletin users can find more information

There is also an accompanying historic alcohol duty rates document.

Both historic duty rates and background and references are published in HTML format.

In November 2020, substantial formatting changes were made to the Alcohol Bulletin to ensure alignment with accessibility regulations for digital content from public bodies as legislated within the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This reformatting of the Alcohol Bulletin formed part of HMRC’s wider accessible documents policy.

Changes made to the Alcohol Bulletin included:

• replacement of Portable Document Format (PDF) files previously used for statistics commentary with HTML documents for the same purpose

• migration of all alcohol duties background, references and rates information from Microsoft Excel tables to HTML documents

• migration of data tables from Microsoft Excel to ODS format

• simplification of language used to avoid jargon and clear explanations used to describe all non-decorative features

An accessibility report was first produced to identify required format changes. The overriding aim of this reformat was to improve how perceivable, operable, understandable and robust the Alcohol Bulletin is for all users, in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) design principles for accessibility.

6. Coherence and comparability

By definition, there are no other sources that allow a comparison with the data in the bulletin (since HMRC is the only organisation which collects and estimates duty paid and the associated clearances).

The data used to compile the Alcohol Bulletin comes from several sources:

• Customs and Excise Core Accounting System (CECAS) is used to extract data for Wine Duty, Spirits Duty, Beer Duty and Cider Duty receipts

• Print Retrieval and Data Access system (PRADA) provides data for alcohol goods movement from UK registered excise warehouses

• Cumbernauld Beer Duty system provides data from EX46 returns submitted to HMRC by UK breweries

• UK Distillery system provides data on spirits production from W21 returns submitted to HMRC by UK distilleries

Additional financial data is also provided by the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) directorate relating to traders who pay duty via duty deferment and registered within the Registered Excise Dealers and Shippers (REDS) system.

Comparability over time of duty rates and receipts at constant prices is reliant upon the deflator used. HMRC uses the Inflation and price indices series published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and values are therefore subject to any biases this series might present.

Clearances statistics relate to when traders clear goods onto the UK market for sale. It is important to exercise caution when referring to clearances statistics, as the data published does not allow for assertions about sales or consumption directly.

Clearance data can be affected through forestalling practices by traders, resulting in large quantities of goods being released onto the UK market before duty increases to avoid the new, higher charges. This is noted clearly in the bulletin.

Data within the bulletin relates to the UK as a whole and cannot be disaggregated into lower geographical breakdowns, and are therefore not affected by changes in geographies.

7. Trade-offs between output quality components

Since the data relates to all alcohol on which alcohol duty is paid to HMRC, in general there have been no trade-offs which have necessitated balancing different aspects of quality.

There has been a rare occasion when all information on spirits production has not been available by the time of the publication (because a spirit producer has not made its return in time to HMRC). In this case there is a trade-off between publishing the bulletin on time, against waiting until this data is available (the time frame of which is usually unknown).

In these instances it is made clear that the latest data is provisional.

8. Assessment of user needs and perceptions

The demand for the Alcohol Bulletin is measured by the number of unique page views which represents the number of visits during which the page was viewed at least once. Within the financial year ending in 2021, there were 1,756 unique page views.

Over time the Alcohol Bulletin has evolved as a result of information discovered through consultations and surveys.

Examples of previous consultations and surveys include:

• a user engagement survey in 2010 resulted in changes to the bulletin, including consolidating it into one bulletin from 4 separate bulletins and inclusion of historical data

• following the 2012 UKSA report, further changes were made to the bulletin, including the inclusion of commentary, graphs and background information

• in 2016, the frequency of the bulletin was altered from monthly to quarterly as a result of a consultation

The Alcohol Bulletin was not up for consultation in the 2021 survey and as a result will see no changes.

9. Performance, cost and respondent burden

The quarterly update to the Alcohol Bulletin takes up to 4 working days in total for the main analyst to complete and receive QA from other analysts, the team leader, and the person signing off the release. The annual cost, therefore, is around 16 days a year (4 days per bulletin completed 4 times a year).

This is the most time consuming bulletin of all those published by the team, as it encompasses the retrieval and aggregation of several data sources, which in some cases can be lengthy procedures. The number of checks to the data is naturally large, although it could be reduced with further scrutiny.

There is no respondent burden since the data is taken from administrative sources which are used by taxpayers to make their usual returns to HMRC.

10. Confidentiality, transparency and security

Before going live, the bulletin is classified as pre-released National Statistics, and is therefore subject to a restricted protective marking when referred to in email correspondence and is subject to the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, which is strictly enforced.

From February 1996, statistics for made wine clearances over 15% alcohol by volume (ABV) have been included within still made wine 5.5% to 15% ABV clearances statistics. Made wine clearances statistics from UK origin over 5.5% ABV have also been included within ex-warehouse clearances over 5.5% ABV statistics.

Some data relating to UK-produced grain whiskey is suppressed, and from April 2011 has been combined with UK-produced blended whisky clearances.

All of these changes were made to preserve commercial confidentiality (since publishing on their own would be considered disclosive).