Funding, staff, users, and reviews of the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS)

Dyddiad y datganiad:
18 September 2025

FOI reference: FOI-2025-3079

You asked

During the two recent Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) sessions with representatives of the UKSA, OSR and ONS present as witnesses, mention was made of TLFS. These sessions were on 1 and 8 July 2025.

Please provide the following in relation to TLFS, and all of its precursor names such as LMS, STS and so on.

  1. How much funding, by financial year, has the ONS spent for the Transformed Labour Force Survey TLFS from inception up to and including 2024-25? Please include a breakdown of annual costs, and a breakdown of development costs.

  2. As of end-July 2025, how many staff were working on the TLFS?

  3. As of end-July 2025, how many active TLFS ONS/external users were there? Q3 is meant to be the external users of the TLFS survey such as the Bank of England. That is, if any external organisation to ONS is using the TLFS yet, as the witnesses at the PACAC didn't seem to make it clear to the Committee.

  4. Please provide a copy of any external reviews, evaluations, assessments or reports on the Transformed Labour Force Survey. 

  5. Ms Yang of the Treasury Select Committee asked questions about the requirement of the TLFS, which caused confusion amongst at least two of the witnesses to the PACAC who were answering questions. Please provide requirements definition documents or similar that clearly state what the requirements of the TLFS were. Please also provide reference to project schedules, delivery milestones and delivery dates.

We said

Thank you for your request.  

1. The TLFS was created from a series of legacy research and delivery projects over many years. The directly attributable costs of setting up, developing, and testing the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) have been captured since Financial Year 2021/22 and average £10.1 million a year across the rollout. This includes actual costs up to the end of FY 24/25. 

The estimated cumulative cost of the TLFS is £40.5 million across four years, of which, TLFS estimated development and testing costs are c.£11.5m – see Figure 1 in the associated download.  

The majority of costs incurred relate to the large-scale resourcing required to operate the survey, but the total figure provided includes further costs such as printing/materials and postage costs. All of which ensure the TLFS provides the best information possible. 

The c£5m increase in spend between FY 23/24 v FY 24/25 is mainly due to:  

  • Increased staffing costs attributed to the full rollout of the TLFS survey operation and interviewer ‘knock to nudge’ respondent calls 
  • Capital expenditure and purchase of phone and laptops to support interviewer uplift 

2. Since April 2025, ONS has created a new TLFS Programme and received additional Treasury funding to strengthen a scaled-up field operation and increased analysis and methods resource. 

As of July 2025, the headcount across the full new Programme is as follows. 

Total field operations to deliver the live TLFS (FTEs): 238.4 

Of which: 

  • ONS staff: 110.4 
  • Agency staff: 128 

ONS development, testing and project/programme management staff (FTEs): 81.74 

Total: 320.14 

3. Data collected by the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) are not yet publicly available. Therefore, no users are actively using the TLFS data yet, and they continue to make use of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for reporting and decision-making until the transition to the TLFS takes place. We are unable to provide an estimate for the number of active LFS users there are, as the data are made openly and freely available on the ONS website. 

4. As outlined within our recently published letter from Emma Rourke, Acting National Statistician, the TLFS originated from a range of early research projects. Some of this research was conducted by Ipsos MORI and published in 2018 with recommendations as to which combination of survey materials and incentive strategy works best: 

Since 2020 a routine set of Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) external reviews and reports on the TLFS have been completed as part of our commitment to transparency and engagement: 

There have also been external reviews by academics Ray Chambers, FASSA, Honorary Professor of Statistical Methodology, University of Wollongong and Australian National University and James Brown, Professor of Official Statistics, University of Technology Sydney completed:   

The Stakeholder Advisory Panel on Labour Market Statistics provides independent expert advice on the compilation, maintenance, and publication of ONS labour market statistics, including the TLFS. The minutes from all Panel meetings are available on the UKSA website. 

Also outlined in the PACAC letter, some of the TLFS-related work was owned and delivered within the Ambitious Radical Inclusive Economic Statistics (ARIES) Programme. The external evaluation by NatCen of the Ambitious Radical Inclusive Economic Statistics (ARIES) Programme, which contains a section specifically on Labour Market statistics and the TLFS, will be published on the ONS website at the end of October 2025. We will share a link to the published report when available. 

5. We include a link to the recently published letter from Emma Rourke, Acting National Statistician. This letter captures early endorsed papers and original design concepts relating to the TLFS. 

The TLFS Programme uses measures of success criteria to capture requirements. These continue to evolve aligned to ongoing data analysis and user engagement. These criteria, along with our programme schedule and delivery milestones and dates, will be published in October 2025. 

The NatCen ARIES programme external evalutation and the TLFS publication that will include criteria, programme schedule and delivery milestone dates are exempt from disclosure under Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), as we have the intention to publish these in the future. This is currently planned for October 2025. 

This exemption is subject to a public interest test.  

We appreciate there is public interest in disclosure so the public can understand more about the current status of the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). However, we must also consider the public interest in allowing time and space to enable accessible presentation of the materials and provide additional commentary and context to support better understanding and appropriate use of the information. Inclusion in our regular series of articles will also increase the reach and use of the materials as they will be published in an orderly and accessible way for all users. It is therefore in the public interest to withhold the reports until release later this year.

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