Guidance

Accredited Official Statistics status of disability, accessibility and Blue Badge statistics

Updated 11 January 2024

Applies to England

Accredited Official Statistics status

Official statistics are produced to the high professional standards set by the Code of Practice for Statistics. Those that have been assessed by the Office for Statistics Regulation as fully compliant with the Code of Practice for Statistics are designated as Accredited Official Statistics.

Statistics that are not produced by an organisation listed in Section 6 (1) (a) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, or in the Official Statistics Order 2023, fall outside of the Official Statistics process.

This publication is a compendium of Accredited Official Statistics, Official Statistics, and statistics that fall outside the scope of Official Statistics. The type of statistics presented is detailed in Table 2 below.

Table 1: Categories of statistics presented in this publication

Name of category of statistics	Label	Description
National Travel Survey findings	Accredited Official Statistics	These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in February 2022. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.
National Highways and Transport Public Satisfaction Survey findings	Outside the Official Statistics process	The data used to produce these statistics are provided by an external body. They therefore fall outside the Official Statistics process.
Blue Badge statistics (national level)	Accredited Official Statistics	These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in June 2012. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.
Blue Badge statistics (regional and local authority level, lost and stolen badges)	Official Statistics	These statistics are official statistics. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Family Resource Survey findings	Accredited Official Statistics	These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in November 2012. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.

Accredited Official Statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. For more details, see the Accredited Official Statistics Policy.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) assessed Transport Disability and Accessibility statistics against the Code of Practice for Statistics in 2022, and published its findings on the OSR website. The review identified several positive areas, and also made some helpful suggestions for further improvement.

The OSR also published a more wide ranging review of transport accessibility statistics across the UK in 2022. This resulted in a range of recommendations.

We are making several changes following the recommendations from these reviews:

• promoting the statistics more proactively to a range of interested users, and compiling a list of these. This will be done via existing organisations such as the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC)

• working with the National Travel Survey (NTS) team in DfT to assess whether we can present information to users on uncertainty around survey estimates in future statistical releases

• working with the National Travel Survey team to assess future options to focus on specific groups of the population, such as young disabled adults. The proposed increase in the NTS sample size will mean more detailed analysis should be possible in some areas