User needs from 2022-based national, subnational and household projections

This engagement exercise took place during the previous government. We intended to publish a response no later than 12 weeks from the closing of the engagement, however, this response was paused due to the pre-election period of sensitivity.  

We undertook an engagement exercise on user needs from 2022-based national, subnational, and household projections. The engagement exercise ran for six weeks, from 30 January to 12 March 2024, and we held an online webinar on 20 February 2024. The engagement enabled us to gather feedback on users’ output needs from the upcoming projections releases, and to understand what users would like to see in our releases, such as specific variants or new dataset formats.

We conducted this engagement earlier in our production processes than in the past to enable enough time for us to consider and, where possible, meet users’ needs, and to help us prepare for the set of 2022-based projections. For further details, please see our full response summary document.

We would like to thank all respondents for their valuable feedback which will continue to guide our work over the short- and long-term. Some user requests involve longer-term implementation and planning, which we may introduce in a phased approach over time, potentially as part of wider activities within the transformation of population and migration statistics. 

The engagement exercise received 39 responses from a range of stakeholders. These consisted of: 

• 15 responses from local authorities in England 

• 10 responses from other government departments  

• 9 responses from individuals 

• 5 responses from academia, charities and other groups 

The overall feedback on the format of publications showed that users find our accompanying documentation useful, such as statistical bulletins, methodology documents and quality and methodology information (QMI). They were commended for being well-written and designed for a general audience.

It was noted that the articles on methods and assumptions are easy to understand and sufficiently detailed for users to be able to accurately interpret the figures from the projections. These articles also give users the background information needed to make the best use of the projections. However, some users said that they would like to see more technically detailed articles for more experienced and technical users. 

Users highlighted the need for more information about our assumption-setting process and the role of our expert advisory panels. They would also like to see analysis of accuracy and historical changes made around methodology and assumptions used across previous runs of projections. They would like us to provide them with guidance on the appropriate use of our projections and clarify the relationship between mid-year population estimates and admin-based population estimates.  

The engagement has highlighted the need for: 

• a suite of variant projections (broadly similar to those in our 2018-based projections) 

• population projections by ethnic group or country of birth, marital status, disability status, and religious affiliations 

• technically detailed articles on how demographic assumptions were developed, how the projections were produced and the accuracy of past projections releases 

• background information needed to make the best use of the projections 

• population projections for smaller geographic areas 

• a web-based tool enabling users to make customised tables  

For further details, please see our full response summary document. 

We acknowledge the need for guidance on the appropriate use of our projections and their relationship between mid-year estimates and admin-based population estimates. We will publish detailed guidance and updated QMI reports, including information about the strengths and limitations of our projections and their underlying data, and guidance on their appropriate use. 

We have also noted that users would like to see more information around our assumption setting processes and the role of our expert advisory panels. To ensure that the assumption setting process is transparent and well-understood, we plan to continue to make available a summary of the National Population Projections Expert Advisory Panel meeting minutes and membership to users on request. This user feedback highlights the need for us to continue to include information on the evidence to support the assumed future levels of migration, fertility, and mortality and to provide more information on our assumption setting.  

In producing 2022-based projections, we will need to balance and phase the improvements we want to make against the resources we have available. Current work will be focused on the following potential developments: 

• exploring the feasibility of producing a suite of variants requested by our users 

• where possible, reformatting datasets to meet accessibility and machine-readable requirements 

• producing tables of contents or similar release contents files for both subnational population projections and household projections so that our users can find relevant datasets and articles with ease 

• releasing projections data on Nomis in a timely manner and, for the 2022-based national population projections release, we are exploring a new online tool whereby users would be able to select the data (including variant projections) they wish to access 

• analyses of the accuracy, and historical changes made around our methodology and assumptions used across previous projections 

• exploring the feasibility of producing projections based on ethnic group, country of birth and other characteristics 

• exploring the methodological and quality implications of incorporating data from the latest three censuses in the 2022-based household projections 

• feasibility of producing 2022-based household projections broken down by requested household types, such as lone parent households  

Many of the other proposed requests involve longer-term planning and implementation which we will look to introduce over time. For further details, please see our full response summary document. 

We plan to communicate updates through our Population Statistics newsletter, which you can subscribe to on our website. The ONS release calendar contains the latest information on population projections releases and will be updated as we work towards the next releases.