Statistics Wales quarterly update: June 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 reviewed our COVID-19 outputs and stopped or reduced in frequency many of them, while retaining key outputs and ensuring data is still available at appropriate frequencies via StatsWales. We have provided further information on these changes in a blog post and we will continue to use the Digital and Data blog to provide information on our approach. We welcome any comments or feedback on how you use the releases, and any suggested changes to them via KAS.COVID19@gov.wales

An overview of COVID-19 indicators is available on our COVID-19 in Wales interactive dashboard, which is intended to present a weekly snapshot of a selection of indicators on both direct and wider harms from COVID-19. More detail on these indicators and a wider selection of data can be found on our Coronavirus (COVID-19) related statistics and research page.

Public Health Wales also publish a weekly comprehensive picture of new COVID-19 testing, cases, deaths and vaccinations reported in Wales. These are published on the Rapid COVID-19 surveillance dashboard (Public Health 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 continues to have on the labour market. Our Welsh Economy in Numbers dashboard has also been updated.

The labour market statistics (Annual Population Survey) estimates for UK countries, regions, and local areas in Wales were published in March which covered data for the year ending December 2021. Alongside this, we updated the commuting patterns data tables on StatsWales which provide a breakdown of different commuting patterns by local authorities in Wales.

In April we published the size analysis of businesses release which covered data for 2021. This annual release provides data on the structure of enterprises active in Wales, including

estimates for the very smallest businesses that operate below the Value Added Tax (VAT)

threshold.

Also in April, we updated our short-term output indicators release for the final quarter of 2021 and updated the iron and steel production data on our StatsWales website.

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

Schools

We continue to publish weekly data on pupils’ attendance in maintained schools throughout the autumn term.

Data on Counselling for Children and Young People was released on 30 March 2022.

Both the School Census and EOTAS data collections took place on 15 February 2022. Provisional results from the School Census were published on 31 May 2022.

The data collections for on-entry assessments to school and end of Key Stage 3 teacher assessments have been re-instated this year following their suspension during the pandemic. Both of these collections are currently ongoing and results will be published in August 2022. Previous statistical releases can be found in the series on Academic achievement of pupils aged 4 to 14.

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

April saw the publication of our annual statistical release on levels of highest qualification held by working age adults along with the latest quarterly update on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), covering the year to December 2021.

We also resumed the publication of our statistical release on the destinations of post-16 learners, part of the suite of post-16 consistent measures. This uses linked education data, along with data from the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes Study, to look at the employment and learning destinations of learners who left post-16 education in the 2017/18 and 2018/19 academic years. This latest release covers post-16 leavers from two academic years instead of one. We now hope to return to the usual publication schedule, with outcomes for 2019/20 leavers expected to be published in September 2022.

We will shortly be publishing a comprehensive collection of post-16 learning statistics by learners’ ethnic group. This will cover both participation in post-16 education and learners’ outcomes, and will combine new analysis with that already published as part of our other statistical releases.

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

Higher Education and Student Finance

We will shortly be publishing our Initial Teacher Education statistics for the 2020/21 academic year.

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 were published in March – these included:

Housing Demolitions: April 2020 to March 2021 (8 March 2022)

Housing hazards and licences: April 2020 to March 2021 (8 March 2022)

Assistance for housing improvement: April 2020 to March 2021 (16 March 2022)

Social housing vacancies, lettings and arrears: April 2020 to March 2021 (31 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 March 2022) was published on 18 May alongside data for the rest of the UK (ONS). 

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

We have been working with the Fuel Poverty Policy Team to provide analytical support to monitor the plan for tackling fuel poverty 2021 to 2035, including developing a dashboard of all relevant fuel poverty data which we hope to be able to publish this summer. In April we published Fuel poverty modelled estimates for Wales (headline results): as at October 2021. Due to differences in methodology, the 2021 modelled estimates of fuel poverty cannot be directly compared with previous figures. Detailed analysis will be published in the coming months and will be accompanied by a detailed methodology report.

We continue to work with the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) Team to provide analytical support in developing the post 2020 Standard, including the consultation on the proposed Standard. Similarly we are working with the Innovative Models & Housing Decarbonisation Team on the development and delivery of a programme of action to decarbonise all Welsh homes by 2050.

We are continuing to work with other government departments, agencies and ONS regarding sharing relevant data under the Digital Economy Act, such as Council Tax information. We continue to explore accessing other data sources under the Digital Economy Act such as BEIS energy consumption data.

We are interested to hear your suggestion for analytical projects relating housing conditions, suggestions for 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.

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 revised our outputs to concentrate on what is used the most and added new data on 111 calls across Wales.

As interest in these statistics continues to grow, given the wide-ranging impact of the pandemic we have also published a blog post which aims to provide more context to its key concepts so that our statistics are widely understood and used appropriately.

In April, a comprehensive statistical release on the GP workforce was published. This included data on ethnicity, age, sex and Welsh language ability for all staff in general practice, including nurses, direct patient care staff, admins and GPs. Data on full time equivalents was also published for the first time.

This quarter has also seen updates to various other aspects of heath and social services statistics including data on; NHS sickness absence, staff employed by the NHS, eye care measures, NHS smoking cessation services, NHS expenditure programme budgets and specialist children and adolescent mental health service first appointment waiting times.

The Office for National Statistics has also published statistics on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy figures by deprivation quintiles (ONS) in Wales for 2018-20.

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 programme for the new 2022-2026 ADR Wales research programme.

We have also 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.

In March we published School staff vaccination uptake: February 2022 based on a linked data analysis undertaken in the SAIL Databank and in April we published EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS): a review of the Literature to inform our EUSS data linkage project (ADR UK).

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

Reporting

On 17 May, we published results from our online trial. Between July 2021 and January 2022, around 2,000 survey participants were asked to complete an additional online section after they had completed the telephone section.

The online trial results cover: local services and facilities; environmental behaviours; repair and re-use; volunteering; mental well-being; physical punishment of children; gambling; and global citizenship.

We will publish results from the 2021-22 full-year telephone survey on 14 July. This will incorporate the responses from the early results for April to July 2021 and mark a return to annual reporting of the main survey.

National Survey 2023-24 options review

The review of options for the next National Survey contract has now been published.

The report summarises the design options for the National Survey in the future and compares different possible approaches.

National Survey contract 2023-24 onwards

The invitation to tender for the contract to deliver the National Survey for Wales from

2023-24 onwards has now been advertised.

The contract covers fieldwork from March 2023 until March 2028. Set up will begin in the autumn. Fieldwork will continue to be carried out with around 12,000 people each year, primarily by telephone, with an additional online self-completion section in some years. Where respondents cannot be contacted by phone, interviewers may visit addresses and if possible, carry out the survey face-to-face, in home (with a computerised self-completion section in some years). This builds on the current approach to the National Survey, which has proved to be successful.

If you have any questions, please contact surveys@gov.wales

Poverty

On 31 March, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published their suite of poverty related Official Statistics. This includes the Households Below Average Income (DWP), Family Resources Survey (DWP), Income Dynamics (DWP) and Children in low income families (DWP) reports. The data in these reports are the first official poverty statistics to relate to the period after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, for financial year 2020-21.

At the same time we published a statistical article on Measures of poverty and a summary of persistent poverty statistics for Wales on the Welsh Government website.

However, this year both DWP and Welsh Government have published a more limited range of data on Households Below Average Income, with additional cautions. This is because the 2020-21 data collection process was impacted by COVID-19, and for many breakdowns of headline estimates (including UK country estimates) it is not possible to make meaningful statistical assessments of trends and changes in the most recent year compared to the pre-coronavirus level. Our statistical article explains this in more detail and advises against use of the 2020-21 dataset for Wales.

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

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 to discuss.

Equality

We published our Gypsy and Traveller caravan count for January 2022 on Thursday 12 May 2022, providing information on the number of caravans and sites by authorisation status in local authorities across Wales.

We also updated our quarterly estimates for the population by ethnic group and Welsh national identity on 14 April 2022. This data, sourced from the Annual Population Survey (APS), now includes the year ending December 2021.

We have been working closely with the Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to make data relating to the Ukrainian Sponsorship Scheme (Home Office) publicly available, including data for Wales and Welsh local authorities. DLUHC are currently publishing tables including the number of confirmed visa applications, visas issued, and arrivals to the UK. Data for Wales and Welsh local authorities are available in these tables, where geography has been assigned based on sponsor address, or accommodation address if the applicant is not planning on staying with the sponsor. This data will be updated and published at 9.30am on Thursday mornings until further notice.

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

Equality, Race and Disability Evidence Units

We are developing our Equality Evidence Strategy which describes our scope, remit and priorities and aim to publish this in summer 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 at the moment:

• 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

Community safety

We published our six-monthly fire and rescue incident statistics on 10 March 2022, providing data on the number of fires, causalities and false alarms between 1 April 2021 and 30 September 2021.

Trade Survey for Wales (TSW)

Analysis of the findings from the third Trade Survey for Wales (TSW), 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.

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

Welsh International Goods Trade

An analysis of the HMRC Regional Trade Statistics for Wales’ international goods trade in 2021 was published in April 2022: Welsh international goods trade: 2021

Welsh International Goods Trade: new dashboard

Alongside the 2021 summary, an interactive dashboard has also been published to allow users more flexibility in interrogating the regional trade statistics produced by HMRC: International goods trade: interactive dashboard

Input Output Tables

The Minister for Finance and Local Government has agreed to fund a program 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

In March 2022, we published a statistical bulletin and interactive dashboard on rail station usage in Wales which reports on the usage of rail stations in Wales for the year 2020-21. We also published an annual statistical bulletin on rail transport in Wales for 2020-21 which includes information on access to stations, train incidents, railway fatalities and crime. Both of these publications consider the impact Covid-19 restrictions had on rail transport and rail station usage during 2020-21.

The Public service vehicles report for April 2020 to March 2021 was published in April 2022 including data on bus services, fares and journeys as well as taxis and private hire vehicles. This publication considers the impact Covid-19 restrictions had on Public Service Vehicles in 2020-21.

Our police recorded road accident dashboard was published on 18 May 2022 to include the July to September 2021 data. This dashboard provides an interactive view of the police recorded road accident information.

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

Annual Population Survey 

On 31 March, the Annual Population Survey (APS) results on the Welsh language for the year to December 2021 were published.  

According to the survey, 29.5% of people aged three or older in Wales were able to speak Welsh (this figure equates to around 892,200 people) for the year ending 31 December 2021.  

The ONS is planning to further reweight the APS datasets, including data from the year ending December 2020. Further details of their plans will be provided once they have finalised a timeline.  

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 will begin publishing 2021 Census data from early summer this year. 

Email: WelshLanguageData@gov.wales for further information. 

Annual Aggregate Agricultural Output and Income release published. Also the latest quarterly municipal waste statistics for July to September 2021 published. Defra also published figures for the 4 UK nations for household waste. These figures show that Wales was recycling significantly more of its household waste than other UK nations.

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

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

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