Statistics Wales quarterly update: September 2022

This is the latest in a series of quarterly updates, for users of Welsh statistics, on our latest developments, consultations and plans.

A full list of our most recent publications can be found on our upcoming calendar.

During March 2022 the Together for a safer future: Wales’ long-term COVID-19 transition from pandemic to endemic plan was published. This plan explains that the link between COVID-19 infection, serious illness, hospitalisation, and death has been weakened significantly. This means we can begin to move beyond the emergency response to the pandemic and plan a future in which we gradually transition to living safely with coronavirus.

In line with this plan we have continued to review our COVID-19 outputs and stopped or reduced in frequency many of them, including in this quarter ceasing to update the COVID-19 in Wales interactive dashboard. Similar content to what was collected on the COVID-19 in Wales dashboard is still updated weekly by Public Health Wales on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) surveillance dashboards (Public Health Wales).

We have retained some key outputs where still needed to ensure that data is still available at appropriate frequencies via StatsWales. An overview of COVID-19 indicators is available on our Coronavirus (COVID-19) related statistics and research page.

We welcome any comments or feedback on how you use the releases, and any suggested changes to them via KAS.COVID19@gov.wales

We continue to publish our monthly labour market overview release, which brings together a range of different labour market sources providing the most up to date picture of the impact COVID-19 and other events continue to have on the labour market. Our Welsh Economy in Numbers dashboard has also been updated.

In July, we updated our short-term output indicators release to cover the first quarter of 2022, as well as publishing estimates of sub-regional productivity for 2020.

Also published for the first time in July was data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings on the proportion of employee jobs whose pay is set with reference to a collective agreement for UK countries and regions. This data was published on StatsWales and covers 2012 to 2021.

If you would like to get in touch, please contact economic.stats@gov.wales

Input output tables

The Minister for Finance and Local Government has agreed to fund a programme of work to improve Welsh economic statistics, including the development of Input Output Tables for Wales over the next three years. As part of this work, we would like to better understand the wider external user need for such tables, we will contact users and stakeholders later this year.

For further information contact: Stats.Trade@gov.wales

Schools

We continued to publish weekly data on pupils’ attendance in maintained schools throughout the summer term. The weekly release will restart in the autumn with the first release scheduled for 14 September.

No other statistical releases were published in June and July. Autumn will see a number of statistical releases published including on-entry and KS3 teacher assessments which were paused during the pandemic.

The following publication dates have been confirmed:

• School Census results for February 2002 on 31 August
• Pupils educated other than at school: September 2021 to August 2022 on 8 September
• Academic achievement of pupils in on-entry assessments and at Key Stage 3: 2022 on 28 September
• Examination results on 6 October

If you have any questions or would like to provide feedback, you can contact us on school.stats@gov.wales.

Cross-cutting and post-16 education

Provisional data on apprenticeship learning programmes started for the first two quarters of the 2021/22 academic year have now been published through both our interactive dashboard and StatsWales.

In July we published a comprehensive collection of post-16 learning statistics by learners’ ethnic group. This covers both participation in post-16 education and learners’ outcomes, and combines new analysis with that already published as part of our other statistical releases. The report sets out the baseline statistics on post-16 learning for learners with different ethnic backgrounds so that inequalities can be identified and monitored going forward. We have committed to incorporating the new analysis into our regular statistical releases on post-16 learning.

In order to provide feedback, or for any further information, please contact post16ed.stats@gov.wales

Higher education and student finance

We have published our latest bulletin on Welsh language in higher education.

In order to provide feedback, or for any further information, please contact our HE and Student Finance Stats mailbox: HigherEducationAndStudentFinance.Stats@gov.wales

Monthly management information on homelessness accommodation provision and rough sleeping continues to be published regularly as well as quarterly and annual data on the Help to Buy – Wales (Shared Equity Loan Scheme).

In addition, a number of regular housing statistics outputs have been published since June. These include:

• Homelessness: April 2021 to March 2022
• Social Landlord Housing sales: April 2021 to March 2022
• New House Building: April 2021 to March 2022

The Office for National Statistics continue to publish monthly House Price Index data for Wales (HM Land Registry), the latest of which (for June 2022) was published on 17 August alongside data for the rest of the UK (Office for National Statistics).

Data on Land Transaction Tax continues to be published regularly by the Welsh Revenue Authority.

Please contact us via the stats.housing@gov.wales mailbox with any queries or requests.

Housing conditions and fuel poverty

In the last quarterly update, we provided information on new modelled fuel poverty estimates as at October 2021. We will be publishing more detailed analysis of this data in the coming months to provide more information on who is affected by fuel poverty. This will be accompanied by a detailed methodology report.

Work continues on developing a fuel poverty dashboard to bring together a range of data relevant to fuel poverty

We continue to work with the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) Team to provide analytical support in developing the post 2020 Standard. The consultation on the proposed Standard is now closed and the responses are being analysed.

The Office for National Statistics are planning a publication shortly which provides information about what data is available across the UK about energy efficiency of housing, focussing on information provided through Energy Performance Certificates.

We are interested to hear your suggestions for analytical projects related to housing conditions, suggestions for data sources to investigate, or if you are interested in accessing data we already hold for research projects. Please contact us via the housing conditions evidence mailbox (stats.housingconditions@gov.wales) with any queries, requests, or input on any of the above.

NHS performance and activity

We continue to provide and improve our monthly updates on NHS activity including our monthly NHS performance and activity outputs on ambulances, emergency departments, referrals for first outpatients appointments, diagnostics and therapies, referral to treatment and cancer. In the last quarter we added newly collected management information for the number of individual patients on treatment waiting lists in Wales, in addition to the number of patient pathways which we continue to report on.

In light of the impact COVID-19 has had on NHS activity and performance levels, the Welsh Government has published its programme for transforming and modernising planned care and reducing waiting lists in Wales. This plan sets out a number of key ambitions to reduce waiting times for people in Wales. This quarter we have also incorporated these measurements of performance against these ambitions into this statistical release and on StatsWales.

Primary and community care

In primary and community care statistics, and following on from a comprehensive statistical release on the GP workforce last quarter, we have published a further statistical article giving new insight on general practice and primary care cluster population and workforce by deprivation level. New and updated reports for maternity and births, breastfeeding and the Healthy Child Wales Programme were also published this quarter.

Other health and Social Services statistics

New data was published from the National Survey for Wales on elements of population health including health-related lifestyles and behaviours of adults and general health and illness of adults.

This quarter has also seen updates to a wide range of statistics on health and social services, including: NHS dental services, NHS sickness absence, staff employed by the NHS, substance misuse, eye care measures, abortion statistics, local authority registers of disabled people, detentions under the Mental Health Act, referrals and waiting times for Mental Health Support Services and specialist children and adolescent mental health service first appointment waiting times.

All our statistical releases are available on the Statistics and research website and more detailed underlying data is available on the health and social care area of StatsWales

For further information or to get in touch please email stats.healthinfo@gov.wales.

We have continued to develop our research plan for the new 2022-2026 Administrative Data Research (ADR) Wales research programme. This has involved consultations with a wide range of policy areas and stakeholders. We expect to publish our plan in advance of our ADR Wales launch event before the end of 2022. This will provide more detail on our research thematic areas.

Research thematic areas

• Climate change
• Education
• Early years
• Housing
• Mental Health
• Skills and Employability
• Social Care
• PANDAR (COVID-19)
• Well-being
• Social Justice

We have continued to support the supply of Welsh Government microdata to the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank to enable these datasets to be securely accessed by researchers for the purpose of data analysis projects for the public good.

We have also held constructive discussions with other government partners, including ONS, DVLA, and local authorities, to encourage and support them to make their data available in SAIL.

If you would like to get in touch, please contact ADRUWales@gov.wales.

The annual Well-being of Wales report is due to be published on 29 September this year. This report will provide an update on well-being in Wales to help us assess whether we are making progress against the seven national well-being goals set by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The report considers progress against the 50 national indicators, alongside a range of other relevant data.

As in 2021, an easy read report will be published in addition to the main report to help ensure everyone is able to access statistical information about Wales.

In 2018, we published a separate report on well-being in children, alongside the main Well-being of Wales. This report included analysis of children’s well-being based on the Schools Health Research Network, as well as using the Millennium Cohort Study and other sources such as data on children in workless households from the Annual Population Survey. We’ve received feedback that there’s a gap in data on children, so this year we’ll be producing an updated children and young people’s well-being report alongside the main report.

This year will be the first time that the Well-being of Wales report will include reporting on the national milestones. National milestones assist in measuring the pace of change needed to achieve the well-being goals. The first wave of national milestones were set in December 2021 and will be reported on in this year’s Well-being of Wales report where data is available. The second wave of national milestones are currently being consulted on and are expected to be laid before the Senedd in October 2022.

In December 2021 we also laid an updated set of national indicators. We will be reporting on some of these new indicators for the first time this year. These include:

• Percentage of people in employment, who are on permanent contracts (or on temporary contracts, and not seeking permanent employment) and who earn at least the real Living Wage
• Pay difference for gender, disability, and ethnicity
• Proportion of employees whose pay is set by collective bargaining
• Active global citizenship in Wales
• Percentage of households spending 30% or more of their income on housing costs

If you have any questions or would like to provide feedback, you can contact us on stephanie.howarth001@gov.wales.

First release of full-year 2021-22 results

On 14 July, we published the full-year results for the 2021-22 survey on our web pages. This was the first full-year release since 2019-20 (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

Topics covered in the 21-22 survey included:

• Local area and environment: community cohesion, safety in local area, local authority services, local environment quality, noise pollution
• Healthy lifestyle behaviours: smoking, alcohol, diet, BMI, and physical activity
• Sport: participation in sports and other physical activities
• Schools and children: satisfaction with school, access to devices for learning and active travel to school, and child physical activity
• Employability
• Post-compulsory education and training
• Internet use and skills
• Health services: GP services, dental health, eye care and hearing
• Overall satisfaction with Welsh government, health services and education
• Pet welfare: ownership, where they were obtained, microchipping and insurance
• Arts: attendance and participation… and much more!

A headline release was published covering the main results with additional tables and charts available on the results viewer. More in-depth reports on specific topics will be published over the following 12 months. The National Survey for Wales questionnaire from this year’s survey and all other survey years are available online.

Please contact us at surveys@gov.wales if you have any questions.

National Survey 2023-24 onwards

Bidding has now closed for the contract to deliver the National Survey for Wales 2023-24 onwards. The contract covers fieldwork from March 2023 until March 2028. Set up will begin in the autumn. If you have any questions, please contact Chris.McGowan@gov.wales

For information on the wide range of poverty related statistics available, please refer to our poverty related statistics collection page.

Cost of living

We will continue to work with relevant organisations to ensure that Wales-level data on key cost-of-living metrics are made available wherever possible. As mentioned above, we are planning more detailed analysis on fuel poverty in the coming months and working towards a fuel poverty dashboard. Despite the discontinuation of the COVID-19 in Wales interactive dashboard, we will continue to publish regular StatsWales data on Emergency Assistance Payments made from the Discretionary Assistance Fund in order to provide timely insight on the cost of living crisis.

In August the Office for National Statistics circulated a newsletter highlighting a range of information and official statistics on the cost of living in the UK, including links to a UK Economy roundup (Office for National Statistics) which provides a short summary of new publications on the cost of living and the economy. Latest data on inflation, petrol prices, gas prices, pay, manufacturing and retails sales as well as survey data from the Opinions and Lifestyle survey regarding concerns about the cost of living and changes in behaviours are included. They also published an article in August on what actions people are taking because of the rising cost of living.

Citizen’s Advice have published a data dashboard providing insights on how the crisis is affecting their clients.

In the coming months we plan to explore the best ways to bring together key information on cost of living, to make relevant data more accessible to users.

Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD)

As mentioned in the health and social services update above, we have published a statistical article giving new insight on general practice and primary care cluster population and workforce by deprivation level.

In August we also published a new article describing the patterns seen in Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) indicator data between different deep-rooted deprivation categories, supported by a dataset on StatsWales.

If you want to receive notification of publication updates for WIMD, please email stats.inclusion@gov.wales to subscribe. We are also able to provide information sessions on WIMD 2019, if you are interested in arranging this for yourself, your organisation or network please contact us to discuss.

Ukraine response

We continue to work closely with the Home Office, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to support publication of data on the UK’s response to the war in Ukraine, including data for those seeking refuge in Wales. Current publications are:

• Ukraine Family Scheme, Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme (Homes for Ukraine) and Ukraine Extension Scheme visa data (Home Office) includes UK level data for the numbers of confirmed visa applications (including withdrawn, refused and awaiting conclusion), visas issued and arrivals into the UK for the Ukraine Family Scheme and the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme. Also published is the number of applications received, granted, and awaiting conclusion for the Ukraine Extension Scheme. This data will be updated and published at 9.30am on Thursday mornings until further notice.
• Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme: Visa data by country, upper and lower tier local authority (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) includes UK, four nations and local authority data for the numbers of confirmed visa applications, visas issued and arrivals into the UK for the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme. Data for Wales is available at the local authority level for visas with individual sponsors (where location is determined through sponsor address, or accommodation address if the visa holder will not be staying with the sponsor), and nationally for visas sponsored by the Welsh Government. This data will be updated and published at 9.30am on Thursday mornings until further notice.
• Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme and Ukraine Family Scheme: Visa data by age and sex of applicant (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) includes UK and four nations data on the age and sex of visa applicants, holders and arrivals to the UK. Breakdowns are available for the Ukraine Family Scheme at the UK level, and for the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme at Wales level. A further breakdown by sponsor type (individual or Welsh Government) is available for the latter.
• UK Humanitarian Response Insight Survey – survey of arrivals to the UK from Ukraine. This survey aims to capture the experiences, characteristics and service needs of visa holders entering the UK under the Ukraine Humanitarian Schemes. Two waves of the survey have been carried out to date, in late April (UK results (Office for National Statistics), headline results for Wales (Office for National Statistics)) and mid-June (UK results, headline results for Wales (Office for National Statistics)) as well as a follow-up survey for those who responded in late April.
• Homes for Ukraine Sponsor Survey (Office for National Statistics) survey of people in the UK registered as sponsors for the Homes for Ukraine scheme. This survey aims to capture the experiences of Homes for Ukraine scheme sponsors providing accommodation to those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, including information on hosting arrangements, sponsor characteristics, support provided, sponsor intentions and challenges.

Community safety

Three publications related to the Fire and Rescue Services in Wales are due to be published in September. These are:

• Fire and rescue incident statistics
• Fire and rescue authority performance
• Fire and rescue service operational statistics

Please email stats.inclusion@gov.wales for more information.

Some of our regular equalities outputs derived from Annual Population Survey (APS) data will be published later than usual due to ongoing source reweighting work by ONS. This affects our quarterly ethnicity and national identity estimates as well as our annual sexual orientation release.

Equality, race and disability evidence units

We have developed our Equality Evidence Strategy which describes our scope, remit and priorities and aim to publish this in September 2022. Research priorities for each unit are being developed with stakeholders based on commitments already made and emerging requirements from An Anti-Racist Wales action Plan, Advancing Gender Equality, LGBTQ+ Action Plan and the Disability Rights Taskforce.

We have been working through how and when we can use co-productive approaches throughout the evidence cycle. We are in the process of exploring how we might overcome certain barriers when adopting this way of working.

We are also working on the following tasks:

• an evidence audit that will provide an understanding of the information that is available, the gaps and inconsistences which need to be addressed.
• working with the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan to support the development of goals, actions and measures.
• commissioning work to help understand how we can collect evidence in line with the social model of disability.
• developing a survey of equality data across public sector bodies.
• working closely with the Disability Taskforce and LGBTQ+ Action Plan team to deliver evidence to support their work.

For more information contact: EqualityEvidenceUnit@gov.wales

Trade Survey for Wales

Analysis of the findings from the third Trade Survey for Wales, reference year 2020, is underway – the previously anticipated publication date of May 2022 has been delayed given the need to undertake further quality checks and introduce new imputation processes to the methodology now that several years’ data has been gathered.

Fieldwork for the fourth year of the survey will launch in September and run until December collecting 2021 data.

Qualitative follow up research around Mode 5 Trade in Services and Rules of Origin have completed and findings will be published in Autumn 2022.

Welsh international goods trade

Headline results from HMRC Regional Trade Statistics for Wales’s international goods trade for the year ending March 2022 was published in July 2022: Welsh international goods trade: April 2021 to March 2022

Alongside the above headline, the interactive trade dashboard has also been updated:

For further information contact: stats.trade@gov.wales

We have recently published estimates of police recorded road accidents and reported road casualties in Wales for 2021 which continued to show the impact COVID-19 had on travel across Wales.

In August, we updated our interactive dashboard for police recorded road accidents for the first quarter of 2022 (January to March 2022). This includes a number of breakdowns including severity or injury and type of road user.

For feedback and comments please contact stats.transport@gov.wales

Annual Population Survey 

Welsh language data from the Annual Population Survey: April 2021 to March 2022 due to be published on 31 August have been cancelled, due to a delay in the availability of the revised reweighted and corrected APS data from the Office for National Statistics.

These releases have been updated on our statistics and research webpages to inform users of the cancellation. Data for the April 2021 to March 2022 period will now be published alongside data for the July 2021 to June 2022 period which is currently planned for October 2022.

Census

The census is the authoritative source for the number of Welsh speakers in Wales, and this is how we will measure progress against the ambition of having a million Welsh speakers by 2050.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published first results from the 2021 Census (Office for National Statistics) on 28 June 2022. These were estimates of the number of people and households in England and Wales.

The ONS has published part two of their response to the recent consultation on the outputs of the 2021 Census (Office for National Statistics). As part of their response, the ONS has committed to investigating the possibility of publishing a wider data set about the Welsh language.

The ONS expects to be able to publish the results of the Census by subject during the autumn and winter term this year. The Welsh Government will be responsible for publishing the results on the Welsh language, in the same way as the results of the 2011 Census. Results on the Welsh language are expected to be published in October or November. More details about the publication plans are available on the ONS website.

School Census

The latest data from the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) February 2022 were published on 31 August. There are a number of Welsh Language indicators available including information about the school medium, Welsh ability of pupils and teachers and whether pupils are being taught in Welsh.

Welsh Language (StatsWales)

Email: WelshLanguageData@gov.wales for further information.

Latest quarterly local authority waste recycling figures were published on 28 July for  the period October to December 2021. The full annual figures are expected by the end of the year.

The annual survey of agricultural land and livestock is in progress with Wales level estimates due to be published in November.

Email: stats.environment@gov.wales for further Information.

A separate demography quarterly update is published which includes all things population related.

For further information or to get in touch please email Stats.Popcensus@gov.wales

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