Annual Population Survey Quality

Following recent challenges in operating the Annual Population Survey, the ONS have carried out an assessment of the quality of the survey.

While the ONS considers the quality of the APS to be robust for national and headline regional estimates, there are concerns with the quality of estimates for smaller segments of the population, such as local authority geographies. In addition, a review and update is needed for the weighting approach used in the APS which has not been updated in line with LFS and is less representative of the current population.

Therefore, ONS outputs produced using the APS data, including those disseminated on Nomis, are now labelled as "official statistics in development". More information can be found in this ONS letter to the Office for Statistics Regulation about the Annual Population Survey.