Survey improvement plans shared with Executive Committee in January 2026

FOI reference: FOI-2026-3447

You asked

Please provide the deep dive on survey improvement issues shared with the executive team earlier this year.

We said

Thank you for your request. 

The January Executive Committee (ExCo) paper requested can be found in the associated download. This highlighted challenges in achieving the original interviewer headcount targets. This paper is now out of date, with key actions completed and further activity ongoing. These actions are supporting quality improvements across the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS), while strengthening the resilience of the field workforce across our broader social survey programme. Redactions have been applied to some personal data in the paper under s.40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). 

We have made significant progress on survey prioritisation to ensure resources are focused where they deliver the greatest statistical value. As part of this work, the Annual Population Survey (APS) boost in England, has been reduced in the short term. This has enabled interviewer capacity to be reallocated to the LCF, a survey that is central to the production of income, GDP and Prices statistics and which will receive increased case allocation from April 2026. 

We have also introduced a comprehensive programme of retention and workforce stabilisation measures. These include enhanced onboarding and training to reduce early attrition, the introduction of a retention award to support interviewer stability, expanded opportunities for agency interviewers to convert to ONS contracts, extensions to agency assignment durations, greater flexibility in working patterns, and more efficient deployment of interviewer capacity across surveys. Work is also under way to explore the use of external fieldwork providers to supplement capacity where appropriate. 

Early indications show that attrition began to fall in March compared with the previous month. The number of leavers decreased from 37 in February to 25 in March, representing a reduction of approximately 30%. Since October, we have also converted around 100 agency interviewers to ONS fixed term contracts, achieving 100% retention to date with these interviewers. 

For more detail see the update on the Economic Statistics Plan and the Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan.