The Office for National Statistics (ONS) welcomes the evaluation report of the Future of Population and Migration Statistics (FPMS) programme, prepared by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).
FPMS undertook research advancing the use of administrative data during the programme's lifespan. These achievements have been informative in shaping population and migration statistics. FPMS demonstrated both the potential, as well as the practical challenges, of using administrative data at scale.
FPMS had a bold vision requiring us to work with difficult technical and methodological challenges. FPMS made substantial investments in the development of new methods using administrative data. We both improved the quality of international migration estimates and reduced costs and survey burden on the wider public. We published estimates of some population characteristics, including our recently published estimates of UK armed forces veterans using a combination of Census 2021 and administrative data.
FPMS delivered research that improved understanding of potential uses of administrative data. Legacies of FPMS and the evaluation will inform further research and improvements to our population statistics releases. The evaluation highlights elements of the FPMS programme which worked well. The evaluation also identified elements of the programme which could have been managed better. We have incorporated lessons from the evaluation in the continuous improvement of population and migration statistics.
Feedback from the Consultation on the future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales, as well as that received at the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly, indicated that users will benefit from the improvements made through the use of administrative data. Improvements include more timely and frequent statistics and the granular detail that a census is uniquely placed to provide on many topics. This was reflected in the recommendation from the UK Statistics Authority on the future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales in June 2025 with the recommendation to the UK Government to commission and resource the ONS to begin preparations for a questionnaire-based census in 2031.
Looking to the future
Insights and lessons learned from the final evaluation have been shared across the ONS to inform future statistical production planning and our future evaluations. We have adopted recommendations from the FPMS evaluation to revise our flagship integration of benefits management with a programme evaluation approach. Demonstration of this will feature in upcoming evaluation reports of Census 2031. We will further incorporate lessons from the FPMS alongside lessons from other recent evaluations and reviews as part of the continuous improvement of statistical output activities to ensure we meet priority user needs, as highlighted in our ONS Strategy: 2026 to 2028.