GSS Health and Social Care workplan

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) is committed to the ongoing development of high-quality data and statistics, and will prioritise best practice in methodology, quality assurance and governance. DHSC will also continue to focus on innovation and increasing use of Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP) to produce high-quality and robust analysis by using code to improve the statistical production process.

Priorities for 2026

In the short term, DHSC priorities include:

• ensuring products are accessible
• meeting user needs
• improving coherence and signposting to products

DHSC will also continue to review the quality of statistics publications, ensuring they follow best practices including quality assurance processes, and ensuring quality is always clearly explained in meta data to provide products that instil confidence and trust.

NHS England’s policy objectives, as outlined in the 10 Year Health Plan responding to the Darzi review, focus on shifting services from hospitals to community settings, embracing digital transformation, and moving from illness management to proactive health promotion.

The 10 Year Health Plan also focusses on transparency and NHS England’s statistical priorities are responding to this by drawing together its key outputs into a single accessible overview through its data dashboard and NHS Oversight Framework.

Other data and analytical priorities centre on enabling richer, higher quality, and more timely data to inform both local and national decision-making, supported by the Federated Data Platform and the integration of AI. Emphasis is placed on using shared platforms and algorithms to maximise analytical efficiency, with a strategic move towards sourcing publications and outputs from comprehensive, linkable record-level data rather than relying on aggregate collections or sample surveys.

Priorities for 2026

NHS England plans to consolidate platforms, streamline outputs so they are delivering those with highest value, facilitate monitoring of key government priorities.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) aims to continue producing timely statistics addressing health security threats, such as reintroducing legionella reporting, and to expand the data available on its Data Dashboard with recent additions such data on Mpox Clade Ib and IIb and childhood vaccination coverage.

The agency is working closely with statistical partners to enhance quality assurance processes and transparency, increase the number of statistics designated as Official Statistics, improve compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics, and increase the maturity of the Analysis Function across the organisation. UKHSA is also committed to ongoing engagement with users and partners to ensure its statistics remain relevant and robust.

Priorities for 2026

The UK Health Security Agency’s priorities for the coming year include:

• continuing the implementation of recommendations from its official statistics review programme
• further advancing the principles of reproducible analytical pipelines (RAP)
• working with statistics production teams to increase adoption of user engagement best practice

Additionally, UKHSA aims to cultivate a robust and self-sustaining statistics community, and introduce a cloud-based analysis platform, facilitating the transition of analytical work throughout the organisation.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced prioritisation decisions for the organisation, including reducing its commitments in health. The organisation will still produce statistics on births, deaths and healthy life expectancy, and still aims to enhance these, ensuring its statistical offerings remain timely and valuable to users.

As part of reducing its wider work in health analysis, the ONS is committed to active collaboration with health-focused organisations to strengthen partnerships and foster evidence-based decision-making, including engaging stakeholders and other government departments to identify outputs that others could take forward.

Priorities for 2026

The ONS’s priorities for the coming year centre on:

• establishing reproducible analytical pipelines for core indicators which have not already undergone this transformation
• addressing identified data gaps by securing additional administrative data and health surveys
• assessing the use of estimation and modelling to enhance the timeliness of outputs

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) continues to deliver it’s 2024–2029 Data Strategy, which focuses on treating data as a valuable asset throughout its lifecycle, supporting staff development with appropriate tools and opportunities, promoting efficiency through standardisation, automation and reuse, and leveraging data to drive internal and systemic improvements.

The strategy also emphasises collaboration to minimise duplication and maximise value, encourages the adoption of innovative technologies and approaches, and commits to openness and transparency by making data, analysis, and reporting widely available to enhance value and communication.

Priorities for 2026

The NHSBSA’s priorities for the coming year include continuing to promote wider adoption of the statistical code of practice and analytical standards and establishing a dedicated analytical and quality assurance capability.

They will also be implementing a new modern data platform and improved data management to support delivery of the Data Strategy and enhance the development of high-quality data and insights. The new Data Hub will continue to be progressed in tandem to enhance user experience by enabling easier access, understanding, and utilisation of NHSBSA data and insights.

The Welsh Government is committed to continually reviewing and enhancing its statistical portfolio, aiming to identify and address gaps in current products or introduce new statistics to better meet user needs.

Efforts will focus on providing more insightful and varied statistical outputs tailored to users, improving data provision by further disaggregating information by protected characteristics, and increasing the use of record-level data rather than relying on aggregate collections. Additionally, the department will keep developing and implementing reproducible analytical pipelines to boost the capacity, timeliness, and quality of its statistical products.

Priorities for 2026

Welsh Government intends to develop reproducible analytical pipelines for our statistical outputs as part of our wider planned transformation of its systems.

The Department of Health Northern Ireland (NI) aims to maximise the utility of data from the developing “encompass” system, incorporating reproducible analytical pipelines (RAP) where suitable, while maintaining close engagement with end users and stakeholders to ensure outputs are relevant and focused.

Their priorities include producing new, more granular statistical products, exploring additional data sources to support health transformation efforts, enhancing interactive outputs on health expectancies and regional inequalities, and applying decomposition methodologies to pinpoint causes and gaps in Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) and Disability Free Life Expectancy (DFLE).

Priorities for 2026

The Department of Health (NI) will focus on:

• enhancing its understanding of data available from the new “encompass” system across both acute and community sectors
• ensuring that their statistical outputs accurately account for any discontinuities resulting from the region’s new IT system implementation,
• undertaking a comprehensive review of the GP Prescribing Formula for Northern Ireland

Public Health Scotland is focused on transforming its publications to maximise public value and address users’ needs, informed by feedback from a 2024 survey of statistics users. A statistical transformation programme has been set up to lead this work.

The organisation aims to expand the availability and quality of social care data to:

• fill existing gaps
• progress the development of a comprehensive primary care data and intelligence platform
• generate new insights into the broader factors impacting health and wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on improving data for protected characteristics

Priorities for 2026

Public Health Scotland aims to continue to undergo prioritisation activities and identify key areas for review.

Through the Statistical transformation programme, it seeks to support those areas looking to review current outputs and implement key changes. Work is ongoing to support the modernisation of Scotland’s social care data landscape.

Upcoming changes include the decision to pause work to produce the 2025/26 Care Home Census to release capacity to work on defining a care home minimum dataset and focus on a wider programme of social care data transformation work (described in Public Health Scotland’s correspondence with the Statistics Regulator).

This work and decisions taken were informed by workshops with key stakeholders in this area,  Alongside this, PHS will continue to refine its quality assurance processes and advance the adoption of User Centred Design principles in the production of statistics, ensuring outputs are both robust and tailored to user needs.

The Scottish Government is committed to continually reviewing its health and social care statistical outputs to meet user needs and address data gaps. This includes ongoing implementation of reusable analytical pipelines to enhance efficiency and collaboration with partners to maximise opportunities from linked and administrative data.

Work will continue on developing, improving and modernising surveys and data collections in Health and Social Care, and on developing strategic oversight and improvement of social care data across Scotland.

Efforts will focus on reducing duplication, improving data quality, identifying gaps, enhancing data sharing, and strengthening co-ordination and communication both within Scotland and across the UK to effectively support social care data and analysis priorities.

Priorities for 2026

The Scottish Government’s priorities for the coming year include completing the current phase of work to enhance data on protected characteristics, as outlined in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025.

They will continue to advance reproducible analytical pipelines within their strategic statistical priorities programme, and, in collaboration with Public Health Scotland, will review the health inequalities data and analysis landscape to deliver recommendations for improving the reporting of health inequalities in Scotland.

The Scottish Government will also develop and deliver an analytical programme to support the implementation and delivery of Scotland’s Health and Social Care Reform Portfolio.

Changes will be made in accordance with the health and social care statistics consultation.

Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England

As DHSC and NHS England come together, there will also need to be consideration of the package of statistical products produced and prioritisations made. This is likely to mean a consolidation in statistical products over time as a joint strategy is developed.

UK Heath Security Agency

The UKHSA is making improvements to our publications on RSV maternal vaccination coverage and RSV older adults vaccination coverage, including redesigning the HTML reports, and adding ODS spreadsheets and accompanying quality reports. Once these changes have been made, we aim to badge the publications as Official Statistics. As set out in the Adverse Weather and Health Plan, we are also developing a new Official Statistic reporting on cold-associated deaths, expected in early 2026.

Public Health Scotland

PHS is developing a new ‘planned developments’ website page in order to ensure full transparency and user involvement in upcoming changes to publications such as those within social care outlined previously, and work by some teams such as the reproductive and maternal health analytical team who are looking to implement changes in the format of their current publications. This will provide users with a central place with details of publication developments across the organisation that are underway or proposed and will expand current processes of teams including updates on their individual publication pages. This should allow for a more accessible and navigable user experience.

Office for National Statistics

The ONS content transformation project will improve the way our statistics are presented with a more visual and accessible format for website content. This will involve greater use of explanatory text in accordions/twisties, clearer presentation of uncertainty and caveats, and increased prominence of key trends. Alongside these accessibility and presentation improvements, the ONS is exploring the possibility and benefits of presenting death occurrences alongside death registrations to strengthen its mortality metrics for all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality, including nowcasting to model current numbers of occurrences from deaths registered to date.

Welsh Government

Welsh Government will be making changes based on user need highlighted in above sections.