FOI-2023-1092
You asked
With reference to the Family spending in the UK report. Is it possible to get more granular data for family spending? E.g., city or Local Authority.
We said
Thank you for your request for a breakdown of Family spending in the UK by city or local authority level.
Unfortunately, we would not be able to release the requested data at a city or local authority level as we would have serious concerns about the quality and robustness of this information.
Family Spending in the UK is sourced from The Living Costs and Food Survey. This survey has a sample of approximately 5,600 households for the financial year ending 2022. The sample size for this survey is small and therefore would not be sufficient to produce a quality output at a city or local authority level.
For example, we currently produce this information at a regional level in England in our publications. We average the data at this level over 3 years to ensure that we are providing robust analysis that is useful for the public.
Releasing data at a lower level of granularity would not produce information that is sufficiently representative of the population and therefore would not accurately reflect the purposes for producing the analysis.
This action would go against all three of the core pillars in our Code of Practice for Statistics, which is at the centre of our public duties, as the information produced would not be high quality, would not be valuable, and would not be trustworthy.
This disclosure therefore would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs, engaging Section 36(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
This exemption is subject to a public interest test.
We understand and appreciate the public interest in the transparency around the information we hold, particularly data pertinent to the cost of living. However, it would not be in the public interest to produce information that would mislead and confuse public understanding in this topic. We must uphold our responsibility to produce information on this topic that enhances understanding.
Furthermore, we must consider the damage that releasing such poor-quality information would have to the trust the public and government have in our statistical outputs. Such a reduction in public trust means that they would no longer be able to rely on our data when making decisions. Such decisions would therefore no longer benefit from accurate, well-informed statistical information.
On balance, the public interest falls in favour of withholding the requested information in this instance.
If you would like to discuss any of our published statistics or understand our methodology further, please feel free to contact the Household Income and Expenditure Analysis team directly at family.spending@ons.gov.uk.