Publication, Document

Statistics Wales quarterly update: March 2023

March 2023 update for users of Welsh statistics on our latest developments, consultations and plans.

First published: 18 May 2023

Last updated: 18 May 2023

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Introduction

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.

Economy and labour market

Economy

In January we published our short-term output indicators release for July to September 2022 and updated the business demography 2021 data to include industry breakdowns on our StatsWales website.

In February we published regional gross domestic product: April to June 2022.

Our Welsh economy in numbers dashboard has also been updated.

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

Input output tables

Our project to develop input output tables for Wales continues. Input output tables provide detailed data on economic flows in Wales. If anyone with an interest in this project would like to receive regular updates or discuss how this may benefit your work, then please contact stats.trade@gov.wales.

We have arranged to boost the samples of the Annual Business Survey, Annual Purchases Survey, Business Register and Employment Survey and the Living Costs and Food Survey. This will enhance the data we have available to produce input output tables, as well as for other users of these surveys.

Labour market

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 different events have on the labour market.

In December, we published Labour market and travel to work in Wales (Census 2021), a summary of Census 2021 data on the labour market in Wales, including economic activity status, industry and occupation and travel to work. More detailed analysis is due to be published by the Office for National Statistics and information on their publication plans are available on the ONS website.

In February we published our Annual Population Survey labour market statistics data for October 2021 to September 2022 which includes data for UK countries and regions and also for local areas. The next update to this statistical release will be published on the 6 April 2023.

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

Education

Schools

We continued to publish weekly data on pupils’ attendance in maintained schools throughout the spring term. In May the frequency of this release will change from weekly to monthly with publication on the first Wednesday of every month. This will begin with the publication on 3 May 2023 with the next edition being on 7 June 2023.

The School Census, EOTAS and independent school census data collections all went ahead in January, the first time since 2020 that they have done so. Results from the school census are due to be published in May.

Counselling for children and young people: Sep 2021 to Aug 2022 was published on 30 March.

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

Post-16 education

A number of our large annual statistical releases have been published recently. Following the suspension of performance measures during the Coronavirus pandemic, we have resumed the publication of the post-16 achievement measures, part of the suite of consistent performance measures, for the 2021/22 academic year. This is the first release in this series since February 2020 and includes additional analysis, such as looking at post-16 achievement by factors such as ethnic background and free school meal (FSM) eligibility.

Similarly, we resumed the publication of the learner outcome measures for work based learning and adult learning. This has also been expanded to include more analysis by learner characteristics since the previous edition in 2020.

Further education, work based learning and adult learning statistics for the 2021/22 academic year were also published recently, covering things like participation and enrolments across the sectors. Our quarterly apprenticeship starts dashboard was also updated with data for quarter 4 of the 2021/22 academic year (May 2022 to July 2022), along with finalising previously published provisional data for the rest of 2021/22.

In January we published Education in Wales (Census 2021), a summary of education information for Wales from the most recent Census. More detailed analysis of education data, including multivariate analysis, is due to be published by the Office for National Statistics. More information on their education analysis plans (ONS) is available on the ONS website.

Other outputs in recent months have included quarterly updates on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and the Jobs Growth Wales+ programme.

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 annual releases on Staff at higher education institutions and Students in higher education.

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

Housing

Monthly management information on homelessness accommodation provision and rough sleeping continues to be published regularly. A workshop for local authority data providers was held in March to discuss how to improve the quality of the data and expand the range of data published.

Since January, the following regular housing statistics outputs have been published:

Help to Buy – Wales (Shared Equity Loan Scheme): October to December 2022 (published 16 February 2023)
Affordable housing provision: April 2021 to March 2022 (published 2 February 2023)

The Office for National Statistics continue to publish monthly House Price Index (HM Land Registry) data for Wales, the latest of which (for December 2022) was published on 15 February alongside House Price Index (ONS) data for the rest of the UK.

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

Housing conditions and fuel poverty

We have published the following regular outputs:

As part of the Housing Stock Analytical Resource (HSAR), we are working to produce an interactive dashboard exploring the energy efficiency of homes in Wales and the improvements recommended to increase energy efficiency.

Please contact us via stats.housingconditions@gov.wales with any queries, requests, or input on any of the above.

Health and social services

Hospital statistics

We continue to improve our monthly updates on NHS performance and activity which includes data on unscheduled and scheduled care. In the last quarter the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has agreed that our cancer services statistics meet the standards required for designation as National Statistics.

We continue to report and improve on:

new management information of the number of individual patients on treatment waiting lists, in addition to the number of patient pathways, and
on performance against a number of key ambitions set out by the Welsh Government in light of the impact COVID-19 has had on NHS activity and performance to reduce waiting times.
aiding users’ understanding of comparisons of NHS performance statistics across the UK and continue to work with colleagues across the UK to better identify and communicate where differences exist and support users in making meaningful comparisons.

Primary and community care

We continue to update and add additional insight to many of our outputs, including this quarter updating the annual report on the Healthy Child Wales Programme and quarterly updates on the NHS dental services, Healthy Child Wales Programme, breastfeeding data and substance misuse statistics (which is now published by Digital Health and Care Wales).

NHS workforce

This quarter’s staff employed by the NHS included new insight and breakdowns on staff characteristics such as age, gender, disability, nationality and ethnicity by staff group for the first time. NHS sickness absence included more detail on sickness absence rate by staff group and local health board.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) response

During March 2022 the Together for a safer future: Wales’ long-term COVID-19 transition from pandemic to endemic plan was published. This 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. In line with this plan, we have stopped or reduced in frequency many of our COVID-19 outputs.

We continue to update some key outputs to ensure that data is still available, including on; positivity and antibody estimates from the Coronavirus Infection survey, admissions and hospitalisations, care homes, NHS staff absence and self-isolation and treatments by therapeutic agent.

A full overview of COVID-19 indicators is available on our Coronavirus (COVID-19) related statistics and research page. Other content on COVID-19 is still updated weekly by Public Health Wales on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) surveillance dashboards (PHW).

Other health and social services statistics

This quarter has also seen updates to a range of mental health statistics including; Detentions under Section 135 and 136 of 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.

In addition to an array of other statistics on health and social services, including:

Ad hoc statistics have also been published on Registered nurses by pay band and gender: 2018 to 2022 and Inpatients, day cases, new outpatient appointments and follow up outpatient appointments in NHS Wales: March 2019 to December 2022.

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.

National Survey for Wales

The current contract to deliver the National Survey, held by Office for National Statistics, comes to an end with the end of 2022-23 fieldwork in March 2023. Following an open procurement process, we have now appointed Kantar as the contractor to deliver the survey for future years. The first full fieldwork year under the new contract will be 2024-25 but preparatory work and cognitive testing of new questions will take place during 2023-24.

The next full-year’s results will be published as planned in July 2023 (based on 2022-23 fieldwork), no results in July 2024, and then full-year results will be published in July 2025, based on 2024-25 fieldwork.

Publication

We continue to carry out further in-depth analysis on the 2021-22 data and published the statistical report Poverty and deprivation (National Survey for Wales): April 2021 to March 2022 on 31 January 2023. Research reports looking at four of the national indicators – Community cohesion, Satisfaction with local area, Community safety and influencing local decisions – will be published in April.

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

Social Justice

Poverty

On 23 March 2023, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published their suite of poverty related Official Statistics. This includes the Households Below Average Income (HBAI), Family Resources Survey (FRS), Income Dynamics statistics and Children in low income families reports. The latest data in these reports relates to financial year ending 2022.

At the same time we published summaries for Wales on the relative income poverty, material deprivation and persistent poverty pages of the Welsh Government website. This includes more detailed Welsh Government analysis of the HBAI datasets for Wales. The data tables are available in spreadsheet format on our relative income poverty webpages, and on the poverty StatsWales page.

Impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on these statistics

Last year both DWP and Welsh Government published a more limited range of data on HBAI, with additional cautions. This is because of data quality issues with financial year ending (FYE) 2021 data, due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on data collection.

For FYE 2022 there remains some residual bias in the FRS sample resulting from the change in survey mode from established face-to-face interviews to telephone interviews. But we have assessed the FYE 2022 data quality to be robust so are publishing the usual range of additional analysis.

Due to the issues described above there remain areas where caution is advised when making comparisons with previous years and interpreting larger changes.

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

Cost of living

We continue to publish monthly updates to StatsWales data on Emergency Assistance Payments made from the Discretionary Assistance Fund (DAF) in order to provide timely insight on the cost of living crisis.

In February Citizen’s Advice updated their Wales-specific Cost of Living data dashboard (Citizen's Advice) providing insights on how the crisis is affecting their clients.

These and other sources of data on the cost of living crisis are signposted in a blog that we published in December. 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.

Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD)

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 at stats.inclusion@gov.wales to discuss.

Ukraine response

We continue to work with the ONS, Home Office, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the other devolved governments to produce statistics relating to the Ukraine crisis.

On Friday 24 March, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and DLUHC published employment data for Ukrainian nationals (HMRC and DLUHC) between March and September 2022. This includes breakdowns for Ukrainian nationals living in Wales, by sex.

The weekly statistics on visa applications, visas issued and arrivals to the UK with sponsors in Wales (DLUHC) continue to be updated.

Community Safety

On 20 March fire and rescue incident data for the period 1 April 2022 to 30 September 2022 were published in a headline and associated StatsWales tables.

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

Equality

In January, we published Sexual orientation and gender identity in Wales (Census 2021), a summary of Census 2021 data on self-reported sexual orientation and gender identity of adults in Wales. More detailed analysis is due to be published by the Office for National Statistics and information on their publication plans are available on the ONS website.

Following publication of published Ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion: Census 2021 in November 2022, we have been working with the Office for National Statistics in the quality assurance of a number of multivariate analysis articles from Census 2021 datasets. The below articles have recently been published and contain analysis for England and Wales:

Data for Wales was published in the Census 2021 Create a custom dataset tool (ONS) on Tuesday 28 March and Welsh Government analysts are considering what form our own analysis of this Census data will take. We welcome views on this which you can send to stats.inclusion@gov.wales.

To coincide with the release of Census 2021 data and transformation of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and derived Annual Population Survey (APS), we are planning to review our equalities outputs which use APS data. If you are users of data included in the below releases, please email us at stats.inclusion@gov.wales so we can keep you informed.

Our equalities outputs include:

Trade

Trade Survey for Wales

Analysis of the findings from the third Trade Survey for Wales (TSW), reference year 2020, is still underway – the previously anticipated publication date of May 2022 has been delayed into 2023 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, collecting 2021 data, closed in December, and is in the process of being validated, analysed and quality checked.
The analytical team have overseen two research projects with TSW respondents who agreed to follow-ups around Mode 5 Services (‘sovietisation’) and Rules of Origin. Mode 5 services: exploratory research with businesses and trade bodies was published in November. The Rules of Origin report will be published 30 March 2023.

Welsh International Goods Trade

Welsh international goods trade: October to December 2022 were published 16 March 2023. These are headline results from HMRC Regional Trade Statistics for Wales’s international goods trade for 2022.

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

A more detailed analysis of the 2022 Welsh international goods trade data will be published in April.

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

Transport

In February 2023 we:

Published our annual motoring offences release for 2021, presenting information on offences such as drug and drink driving and fixed penalty notices.
Published road freight for 2021, presenting information on imports and exports of goods to and from Wales that are carried by road using UK registered heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).
Updated our interactive dashboard for police recorded road accidents for July to September 2022, including breakdowns such as severity of injury and type of user

In March 2023 we:

Published rail station usage: April 2021 to March 2022, presenting information on total entries and exits per rail station in Wales, alongside a rail station usage interactive dashboard.

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

Welsh language

Census 2021

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

We published the first data from the census on Welsh language on 6 December last year, working closely with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Since this publication, information is available on the number and percentage of the population aged three or older in Wales who can speak Welsh (as well as other Welsh skills) for Wales, local authorities, lower super output areas, electoral wards and local health boards.

On 28 March, the ONS published their Census 2021 Create a custom dataset tool (ONS). This resource allows users to create their own datasets from all the 2021 Census data, including characteristics relating to the Welsh language. This means that it is possible to look at the data about ability in Welsh according to other characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity and country of birth.

We hope to be able to publish an analysis of ability in the Welsh language according to some of these characteristics in a statistical bulletin in due course, as well as an analysis of the transmission rates of the Welsh language within households.

Annual Population Survey

The latest Welsh Language data from the Annual Population Survey was published on 25 October.

Following the publication of the 2021 Census results, we have been working closely with the ONS on a programme of work which will look further at some of the differences we have seen between the census and some of our other data sources about the Welsh language, such as the Annual Population Survey. For example, the census has estimated that the number of people who can speak Welsh in Wales has decreased between 2011 and 2021, while the Annual Population Survey estimates that the number has increased significantly during the same period.

We will share further details of the work programme, as well as an update of the Annual Population Survey estimates (for the year ending 31 December 2022) on 25 April.

Welsh Language Use survey

We have published a series of statistical bulletins on the use of the Welsh language using data from the 2019-20 Language Use Survey over the past year.

The articles are available on the Welsh Government website:

We intend to publish the rest of the survey findings in separate statistical bulletins, according to theme, combining the Welsh National Survey data 2019-20 where relevant. We will work on publishing the next two bulletins in the series as soon as possible.

Welsh in the workplace
Use of Welsh with services

Please email welshlanguagedata@gov.wales for further information.

Agriculture and environment

Decarbonisation and Climate Change

The Decarbonisation team within Welsh Government is considering possible additional outputs of greenhouse gas emission statistics and would like to hear from any existing users or potential users. We are predominately focused on devolved administration territorial emissions (NAEI) which are summarised on StatsWales, as these are used in our statutory reporting. However, we would also be interested to hear about users of local authority emission statistics (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) and other greenhouse gas emission reporting for Wales.

We would be specifically interested in how you currently use these statistics, what your key areas of interest are, what data formats would be useful, and whether your needs are met by the data currently available.

Contact decarbonisationmailbox@gov.wales or stats.environment@gov.wales for further information.

Agriculture

The annual release on farm incomes was published in January 2023.

Population and demography

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.

Contacts for Welsh Government statistics