Report Summary
A public briefing on Recorded Crime and Official Statistics Accreditation in the UK, published November 2024.
Note: This public briefing was updated in December 2024 following a meeting with OSR to reflect their latest accreditations and add additional detail relating to Northern Ireland.
England and Wales
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes crime figures in England and
Wales. These are based on police recorded crime and the Crime Survey for
England & Wales.
The Home Office provides the ONS with police recorded crime figures. The Home
Office collates this data from all 43 police forces in England and Wales, plus British
Transport Police. The Recorded Crime publications are official statistics, but not
accredited official statistics. The OSR removed accreditation in 2014 following a
decision that the data may not be reliable. Since that time significant
improvements have been made in crime recording and data quality, but the OSR
have confirmed in their latest review that further improvements are needed before
they can consider reassessing the statistics.
The Crime Survey for England & Wales (CSEW) gathers information from a
representative sample of people aged over 16 about their experience of crime. The
figures from this survey are accredited official statistics.
