Research and analysis

Development plan: annual cover of vaccination evaluated rapidly (COVER) programme statistics for England 

Updated 27 March 2025

Applies to England

• Publication for Northern Ireland
• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

Annual cover of vaccination evaluated rapidly (COVER) programme statistics for England have been co-authored by NHS England (NHSE) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) (previously Public Health England) and published by NHSE within the Childhood Vaccination Coverage Statistics collection since 2017. They were previously published as part of the wider NHS immunisation statistics for England collection. 

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) - the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority - undertook an assessment of these statistics in December 2011 when they were published as part of the wider NHS immunisation statistics for England collection and were formally designated as accredited official statistics (then referred to as national statistics) in June 2013 in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.  

Responsibility for the publication of these annual accredited official statistics transferred to UKHSA from NHSE in October 2024. A key benefit of this to users will be that the full suite of annual and quarterly COVER programme statistics will be published more coherently by one organisation. 

This development plan sets out UKHSA’s commitment for producing annual accredited official statistics on the COVER programme that are of the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality, and public value in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. 

Development of trustworthy statistics 

To support transparency on plans and progress for these statistics, UKHSA has:  

• notified the OSR of plans for UKHSA to take over responsibility of annual reporting and provided assurance to the regulator that UKHSA will continue to produce the statistics in compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics 

• informed users of the statistics of the intention for UKHSA to publish the annual statistics for 2024 to 2025 and beyond. A public notice has been added to the quarterly reporting and the NHSE website. Key stakeholder and user groups, including members of the National Immunisation Network, have also been updated on plans 

To support the orderly release of these statistics, UKHSA has provisionally pre-announced the release of the 2024 to 2025 report on GOV.UK as 28 August 2025.  

To ensure that the annual data is managed and processed securely and appropriately, UKHSA has:  

• undertaken user requirement gathering to understand source data, processing pipelines and outputs 

• reviewed and confirmed that no Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is required since data received is in aggregate form and so does not pose a risk of individuals being identified. 

UKHSA will:  

• continue to include a public notice within the quarterly statistics published ahead of the new annual report of plans for the annual statistics  

• review and publish updates to this development plan for transparency of progress 

• confirm the planned date of publication by late July 2025 

• set up transparent pre-release access arrangements for these annual statistics. 

Development of quality statistics 

UKHSA already has processes in place to publish high quality provisional quarterly COVER programme data sets.  

The annual COVER programme data undergoes additional validation steps to finalise the data for the reporting period, so UKHSA has:  

• commenced the conversion of data processing and validation to R to align with UKHSA’s use of reproducible analytical pipelines to validate and produce annual COVER programme data and statistical outputs 

UKHSA will:  

• continue to use the same data sources and methods so that annual trends over time are unaffected by the transition from NHSE to UKHSA  

• develop and publish a quality and methodology information (QMI) report to accompany both the annual and quarterly statistics. This will cover the strengths and limitations of the data used to produce the statistics, the methods used to produce the statistics, and the quality of the statistical outputs 

Development of statistics that have public value  

To support the development of a new annual statistical series that will continue to meet user need, UKHSA has:  

• sought feedback from wider public users of the annual COVER statistics via an online survey which ran from late December 2024 to late February 2025, to understand how they use the statistics, and their thoughts on the features of the current statistics.  

• held a user requirement gathering session with key stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand their data needs and determine elements of the existing annual reporting solution to retain or develop 

• created a working group consisting of data engineers and product developers to develop dashboard-style reporting, a feature of the NHSE annual statistics that was popular with users but will not replace joint publication of detailed data tables 

• committed to publish updates at the same annual frequency as NHSE

UKHSA will:  

• review and continue to incorporate, where possible, public and stakeholder user feedback into the development of new UKHSA annual reporting solution and remain transparent on any changes made to the content of the statistics as a result

• undertake user testing of designs with stakeholders, users and subject matter experts during the build of the dashboard to validate the requirements gathered

• ensure that the historic annual time series data, previously published by NHSE, will continue to be available for users

• continue to provide opportunity for open-ended user feedback to inform the continued longer-term development of the annual (and related quarterly) COVER programme statistics

• develop and coordinate an appropriate communication strategy that meets user need when the statistics are published, to include potential use of appropriate social media channels