Take part in our surveys
Share your experience at different stages of your research journey through our surveys. Your feedback is used to improve the Secure Research Service (SRS).
SRS Platform Experience Survey
Tell us about your overall experience of the SRS platform, including its data and metadata, functionality, available tools, outputs clearance process and engagement activities.
Complete the SRS Platform Experience Survey.
Researcher Accreditation Survey
Tell us about your experience of becoming an accredited researcher, including the application and training process.
Complete the Researcher Accreditation Survey.
How we use your feedback
We regularly review your feedback to help us identify user needs, and improve our services and the user experience. We bring together survey feedback and other user insights to better understand the overall researcher experience. Following your feedback, we have improved the SRS in several ways.
Large Language Models in the SRS (October 2026)
Users asked why Large Language Models (LLMs), such as Claude or Copilot, are not available in the SRS for coding or machine-learning tasks.
We said that we are exploring options to introduce limited, self-contained LLM capability in the secure environment, to support programming tasks. We are also working across the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to review our LLM policy. We hope future SRS technology upgrades will enable LLM support.
Requesting software versions (June 2026)
Users told us they were unsure which software versions were available in the SRS. We explained that software packages are updated on request and that, if the version they need is unavailable, they can email SRS.Customer.Support@ons.gov.uk.
Support for Structured Query Language (May 2026)
Feedback showed that our support for research teams with limited Structured Query Language (SQL) experience helps them query data, create research-ready subsets and reduces the risk of their analysis crashing.
As a result of the feedback, we introduced more proactive support for SRS users, including:
guidance and short videos from the SRS Operations team covering common SQL statements and functions, including how to select and join data from tables
shared code to support the use of SQL with the Education and Child Health Insights (ECHILD) and Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) datasets
one-to-one advice on setting up effective SQL queries for large-scale administrative data in the SRS, available by emailing SRS.CustomerSupport@ons.gov.uk
Accredited researcher journey (January 2026)
Satisfaction with Safe Researcher Training (SRT) remains high. Overall process satisfaction was 91%. Researchers praised the quality of the training and ONS trainers, as well as the strong focus on statistical disclosure control.
Feedback also highlighted areas for improvement, including account setup and delays after test submission. Several improvements have been made to the accredited researcher process to make training more accessible.
SRT was also moved to the ONS Learning Hub, where users can:
book and manage sessions online
access all training materials in one location
use improved accessibility features
Further improvements are being made to make SRT more accessible for users with additional needs and to speed up the assessment marking process.
Project accreditation (December 2025)
User feedback helped shape the Project Accreditation Service for the SRS (PASS), which replaced the Research Accreditation Service (RAS) in the summer of 2025.
During the first three months after PASS launched, feedback was that 86% of users were satisfied or very satisfied with PASS, compared with 70% of users for RAS in 2024.
Users said that:
the new application portal was intuitive and worked smoothly
the form was clearly structured and supported by clear guidance
the regular status updates kept them informed of progress
queries received prompt responses
Following the feedback, further improvements have been made, including the release of an explainer video.