FOI reference: FOI-2025-3059
You asked
Which police forces within the UK use OSR regulations to record crime by ethnicity?
Are police forces compelled to record crime by ethnicity? If so could you please provide the regulation that covers that.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority. OSR provides independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK, including the crime statistics for England and Wales produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Home Office. We aim to enhance public confidence in the trustworthiness, quality and value of statistics produced by government. We do this by setting the standards that official statistics must meet in the Code of Practice for Statistics. We ensure that producers of official statistics uphold these standards by carrying out reviews of compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
OSR does not set the standards for crime recording. The Home Office is responsible for setting crime recording standards for police forces in England and Wales. All police forces must record and count crimes in line with Home Office's Crime Recording Rules. However, we do review whether the crime data that are recorded by police forces and are used by ONS and the Home Office to produce crime official statistics are of good quality and undergo sufficient quality assurance. For example, last year we published a in-depth review of the quality of police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales.
The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) has developed a national standard for recording data on protected characteristics, including ethnicity, with the aim of improving the consistency of data collection across police forces. The Home Office will be able to provide more information about when and how police forces record ethnicity.