In 2024, the United Kingdom had a Rule of Law Index score of 0.78, compared with 0.79 between 2020 and 2022, with the UK achieving its highest score between 2016 and 2018, when it was 0.81. Declining scores since 2018 imply that adherence to the rule of law has weakened in the UK in recent years.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in the UK found that the 80 percent of British respondents overall reported that most people they knew had been obeying the lockdown rules. The respondents were more skeptical of the wider public as only 67 percent that most people in the UK were obeying the lockdown rules.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of May 2020, a survey carried out in the United Kingdom found that most Brits would not be comfortable doing many public activities if the current coronavirus lockdown restrictions were relaxed. Ten percent of respondents said they would be slightly comfortable travelling by bus after lockdown restrictions have been eased, compared to 20 percent who said they would be slightly uncomfortable. The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. The affected datasets have now been updated. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

APS Well-Being Datasets
From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Further information on the transition can be found in the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 article on the ONS website.

APS disability variables
Over time, there have been some updates to disability variables in the APS. An article explaining the quality assurance investigations on these variables that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage.

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (June 2025) updated versions of the weighting variables NPWT22, PIWTA22 and PWTA22 were added to the study. The reason for the adjustment is an issue ONS identified during a recent review of the weighting method, related to the application of the non-response adjustment for boost cases. In addition, the variable YLESS20 was also updated, and DIFFHR6 was replaced with DIFFHR20. Previously missing imputed values for 'IOUTCOME=6' cases have been added.

Qualitative interviews with 40 au pairs based in the UK. The interviews cover why they became au pairs; what their working routine is like; their relationships with their host families and their future plans. Interviews range in length from 20 minutes to c. 1.5 hours.This project investigates the lives of au pairs and host families in the UK. Au pairs are now depended upon by thousands of British households to provide childcare and help with housework and there is evidence that au pairs are now less distinguishable from other domestic workers. However, au pairs are not protected by employment law. They have no right to a minimum wage, nor defined maximum working hours nor a right to holidays. The project aims are: to investigate the effects of changes to recent UK immigration legislation on the supply of au pairs within the UK to examine the place of au pairing in the life and work trajectories of au pairs to evaluate the subjective experience of au pairs to examine understandings of au pairing within host families’ narratives of (good) parenting. The project uses four methods: an on-line survey and analysis of existing data to provide an overview of the nature and extent of au pairing in the UK; in-depth interviews with au pairs to explore their experiences; interviews with host families to uncover how au pairing to fits with their identity as parents and interviews with key informants to provide context. Qualitative semi-structured interviews. Interviewees were sampled on a convenience basis using snowballing and through on-line social media communities.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information: The number of individuals of all ages who were prescribed contraceptives in the financial years 2019-2020, 2021-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 in community settings (GP surgeries and pharmacies) broken down by contraceptive method. I would also like the proportion these represent of contraception users. For example, X proportion of those on contraception are using the Mirena coil. If possible, I would also appreciate if this were broken down by age of those prescriptions too. To clarify, I mean patients. I also mean both contraceptive drugs and appliances/devices Response A copy of the information is attached. Please read the following information to ensure correct understanding of the data. Fewer than five Please be aware that I have decided not to release the full details where the total number of individuals falls below five. This is because the individuals could be identified, when combined with other information that may be in the public domain or reasonably available. This information falls under the exemption in section 40 subsections 2 and 3 (a) of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This is because it would breach the first data protection principle as: a - It is not fair to disclose individual’s personal details to the world and is likely to cause damage or distress. b - These details are not of sufficient interest to the public to warrant an intrusion into the privacy of the individual. Please click the weblink to see the exemption in full: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40 NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) - NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors, and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over one billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) users. Data Source: ePACT2 - Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the Community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey/Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey/Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man is also included. The data excludes: • Items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification. • Prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals, and private prescriptions. • Items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser. Dataset - The data is limited to presentations prescribed in BNF sections 0703 Contraceptives and BNF section 2104 Contraceptive Devices. Data is presented at BNF Sub Paragraph and BNF Presentation level. Time Period - Financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 (April 2023 - January 2024). Data is currently available up to and including January 2024. Organisation Data - The data is for prescribing in England regardless of where dispensed in the community. British National Formulary (BNF) Sub Paragraph and Presentation Code – The BNF Code is a 15-digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF, and the last eight digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. Most of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23). Patient Identification - Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information (NHS number) was only available for 98.28% of prescription items. The unique patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image. Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing/dispensing. Please note it is possible that a single patient may be included in the results for more than one age band where a patient has received prescribing at different ages during a financial year. The figures for the number of identifiable patients should not be combined and reported at any other level than provided as this may result in the double counting of patients. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple presentations or both financial years. Patient Age - Shows the age of the patient, if recorded. Data Quality for patient age - NHSBSA stores information on the age of the recipient of each prescription as it was read by computer from images of paper prescriptions or as attached to messages sent through the electronic prescription system. The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. There are some data quality issues with the ages of patients prescribed the products. The NHSBSA holds prescription images for 18 months. A sample of the data was compared to the images of the paper prescription forms from which the data was generated where these images are still available. These checks revealed issues in the reliability of age data, in particular the quality of the stored age data was poor for patients recorded as aged two years and under. When considering the accuracy of age data, it is expected that a small number of prescriptions may be allocated against any given patient age incorrectly. Application of Disclosure Control to information services (prescriptions) products- ePACT 2 data is not published statistics - it is available to authorised NHS users who are subject to Caldicott Guardian approval. We have no plans to apply disclosure control to data released to ePACT 2 users. These users are under an obligation to protect the anonymity of any patients when reusing this data or releasing derived information publicly. All requests that fall under the FOI process are subject to the NHSBSA Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation Standard. The application of the techniques described in the standard is judged on a case-by-case basis (by NHSBSA Information Governance) in respect of what techniques should be applied. The ICO typically rules on a case-by-case basis too so each case or challenge or appeal is judged on its own merits. FOI rules apply to data that we hold as part of our normal course of business.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. The affected datasets have now been updated. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

APS Well-Being Datasets
From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Further information on the transition can be found in the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 article on the ONS website.

APS disability variables
Over time, there have been some updates to disability variables in the APS. An article explaining the quality assurance investigations on these variables that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage.

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (June 2025) updated versions of the weighting variables NPWT22, PIWTA22 and PWTA22 were added to the study. The reason for the adjustment is an issue ONS identified during a recent review of the weighting method, related to the application of the non-response adjustment for boost cases. In addition, the variable YLESS20 was also updated, and DIFFHR6 was replaced with DIFFHR20. Previously missing imputed values for 'IOUTCOME=6' cases have been added.

In May 2020, a survey carried out in the UK found that 79 percent of British respondents overall reported they were following the lockdown rules as strictly as when they came into force. Although, a quarter of respondents in the age group 18 to 34 years reported to becoming more relaxed and not quite following the restrictions to their full strictness.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Data subject: Provisional wood-pasture and parkland inventory created during the Natural England Wood-pasture and Parkland Inventory update. Methods of Data Capture: Collation of data from existing national provisional inventory, local record centres, local councils and other sources, verified using Epoch 1-4 maps and aerial photography. Parkland was defined as areas with a minimum of 3 trees, excluding boundary trees, which had less than 250 m between trees. Park extent was mapped to boundary features where park trees were less than 100 m from the boundary or the boundary included a large tree which was less than 250 m from a park tree. Some areas of woodland were included where possible park trees were present. Some open areas and wooded areas were not removed as the precise extent of parkland habitat was difficult to determine from aerial photography. Cemeteries and churchyards were excluded unless they were entirely within the park boundary. The minimum mappable unit for the inventory was 0.25ha. Metalled roads and rivers were excluded according to Natural England mapping rules, therefore some areas <0.25ha may be present if separated by a road. See the data capture rule base for full details. Geographic coverage: England wide. Temporal coverage: 1976 onwards. In total 9815 polygons were captured, covering approximately 278,004.57Ha. Confidence in the data: Each record has been assigned a confidence level based upon the quantity and quality of the source data.

Revenue is projected to climb at a compound annual rate of 1.6% to £48.9 billion over the five years through 2024-25. Recent economic headwinds, including severe inflationary pressures and geopolitical tensions, have taken a hit on consumer spending and business activity, which has limited industry growth. However, the industry is countercyclical, meaning that demand for legal work in certain areas, including litigation and insolvency matters, grows in times of economic downturn. The largest firms have responded to the challenges posed by weaker business activity in the UK by expanding internationally, engaging in M&A initiatives and broadening their services to compete with accounting firms. The introduction of legislation allowing non-legal entities to own legal firms through alternative business structures has created significant price-driven competition. Pressure on fees has encouraged firms to enhance efficiency and cut costs. Law firms have increasingly invested in technology that reduces human error and speeds up routine work, increasing the time employees have to engage in more valuable activities. Following strong growth in 2021-22 as the economy recovered from the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak, an adverse economic climate weakened industry performance over the two years through 2023-24. Soaring inflation, steep borrowing costs and geopolitical tensions eroded business confidence and restricted business spending, with M&A activity taking a hit. Residential property transactions also dropped amid squeezed consumer finances and high mortgage rates. However, revenue is estimated to climb by 3% in 2024-25 thanks to improving economic conditions, with inflation subsiding and interest rate cuts boosting business confidence and expansionary activity. Competitive pressures and the war for talent have weighed on profit. Amid growing costs, larger firms have hiked their fees to support revenue and profit. Over the five years through 2029-30, revenue is forecast to swell at a compound annual rate of 2.8% to £56.2 billion. A more positive economic climate will drive business activity, including deal-making and IPOs, hiking demand for corporate law. The housing market is also set to expand, fuelling property law demand, while more and more organisations will seek legal advice on sustainability matters. Consolidation activity will take place as firms seek to find avenues for growth. The pace of technological advancement will quicken, with more firms attempting to enhance the efficiency of their services using artificial intelligence, blockchain and smart contracts. This will help support profit growth, though the war for talent shows no sign of slowing down.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. The affected datasets have now been updated. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

APS Well-Being Datasets
From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Further information on the transition can be found in the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 article on the ONS website.

APS disability variables
Over time, there have been some updates to disability variables in the APS. An article explaining the quality assurance investigations on these variables that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage.

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

White offenders had the highest reoffending rate out of all ethnic groups (26.6%) in the year to March 2022.

This dataset is about book subjects. It has 4 rows and is filtered where the books is Competition law and policy in the EU and UK. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.

Understanding Society, (UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex and the survey research organisations Verian Group (formerly Kantar Public) and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.

This release combines fourteen waves of Understanding Society data with harmonised data from all eighteen waves of the BHPS. As multi-topic studies, the purpose of Understanding Society and BHPS is to understand short- and long-term effects of social and economic change in the UK at the household and individual levels. The study has a strong emphasis on domains of family and social ties, employment, education, financial resources, and health. Understanding Society is an annual survey of each adult member of a nationally representative sample. The same individuals are re-interviewed in each wave approximately 12 months apart. When individuals move they are followed within the UK and anyone joining their households are also interviewed as long as they are living with them. The study has five sample components: the general population sample; a boost sample of ethnic minority group members; an immigrant and ethnic minority boost sample (from wave 6); participants from the BHPS; and a second general population boost sample added at this wave. In addition, there is the Understanding Society Innovation Panel (which is a separate standalone survey (see SN 6849)). The fieldwork period is for 24 months. Data collection uses computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) and web interviews (from wave 7), and includes a telephone mop-up. From March 2020 (the end of wave 10 and the 2nd year of wave 11), due to the coronavirus pandemic, face-to-face interviews were suspended, and the survey was conducted by web and telephone only, but otherwise has continued as before. Face-to-face interviewing was resumed from April 2022. One person completes the household questionnaire. Each person aged 16 is invited to complete the individual adult interview and self-completed questionnaire. Parents are asked questions about their children under 10 years old. Youths aged 10 to 15 are asked to respond to a self-completion questionnaire. For the general and BHPS samples biomarker, genetic and epigenetic data are also available. The biomarker data, and summary genetics and epigenetic scores, are available via UKDS (see SN 7251); detailed genetics and epigenetics data are available by application (see below). In 2020-21 an additional frequent web survey was separately issued to sample members to capture data on the rapid changes in people’s lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic (see SN 8644). Participants are asked consent to link their data to wide-ranging administrative data sets (see below).

Further information may be found on the Understanding Society Main stage webpage and links to publications based on the study can be found on the Understanding Society Latest Research webpage.

Co-funders

In addition to the Economic and Social Research Council, co-funders for the study included the Department of Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Department for Transport, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Community and Local Government, the Department of Health, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, and the Food Standards Agency.

End User Licence, Special Licence and Secure Access versions:

There are three versions of the main Understanding Society data with different access conditions. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement (this study), one is a Special Licence (SL) version (SN 6931) and the third is a Secure Access version (SN 6676). The SL version contains month as well as year of birth variables, more detailed country and occupation coding for a number of variables, various income variables that have not been top-coded, and other potentially sensitive variables (see 6931_eul_vs_sl_variable_differences document available with the SL version for full details of the differences). The Secure Access version, in addition to containing all the variables in the SL version, also contains day of birth as well as Grid Reference geographical variables. Users are advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements. The SL and Secure Access versions of the data have more restrictive access conditions and prospective users of those versions should visit the catalogue entries for SN 6931 and SN 6676 respectively for further information.

Low- and Medium-level geographical identifiers are also available subject to SL access conditions; see SNs 6666, 6668-6675, 7453-4, 7629-30, 7245, 7248-9 and 9169-9170. Schools data are available subject to SL access conditions in SN 7182. Higher Education establishments for Wave 5 are available subject to SL access conditions in SN 8578. Interviewer Characteristics data, also subject to SL access conditions is available in SN 8579. In addition, a fine detail geographic dataset (SN 6676) is available under more restrictive Secure Access conditions that contains National Grid postcode grid references (at 1m resolution) for the unit postcode of each household surveyed, derived from ONS Postcode Directories (ONSPD). For details on how to make an application for Secure Access dataset, please see the SN 6676 catalogue record.

How to access genetic and/or bio-medical sample data from Understanding Society:

Information on how to access genetics and epigenetics data directly from the study team is available on the Understanding Society Accessing data webpage.

Linked administrative data

Linked Understanding Society / administrative data are available on a number of different platforms. See the Understanding Society Data linkage webpage for details of those currently available and how they can be accessed.

Latest edition information

For the 19th edition (November 2024) Wave 14 data has been added. Other minor changes and corrections have also been made to Waves 1-13. Please refer to the revisions document for full details.

m_hhresp and n_hhresp files updated, December 2024

In the previous release (19th edition, November 2024), there was an issue with household income estimates in m_hhresp and n_hhresp where a household resides in a new local authority (approx. 300 households in wave 14). The issue has been corrected and imputation models re-estimated and imputed values updated for the full sample. Imputed values will therefore change compared to the versions in the original release. The variable affected is n_ctband_dv.

Suitable data analysis software

These data are provided by the depositor in Stata format. Users are strongly advised to analyse them in Stata. Transfer to other formats may result in unforeseen issues. Stata SE or MP software is needed to analyse the larger files, which contain over 2,047 variables.

In the 3 years to March 2023, 25% of households from the Arab ethnic group were overcrowded, compared with 2% of White British households.

This is a publication on maternity activity in English NHS hospitals. This report examines data relating to delivery and birth episodes in 2023-24, and the booking appointments for these deliveries. This annual publication covers the financial year ending March 2024. Data is included from both the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) data warehouse and the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS). HES contains records of all admissions, appointments and attendances for patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England. The HES data used in this publication are called 'delivery episodes'. The MSDS collects records of each stage of the maternity service care pathway in NHS-funded maternity services, and includes information not recorded in HES. The MSDS is a maturing, national-level dataset. In April 2019, the MSDS transitioned to a new version of the dataset. This version, MSDS v2.0, is an update that introduced a new structure and content - including clinical terminology, in order to meet current clinical practice and incorporate new requirements. It is designed to meet requirements that resulted from the National Maternity Review, which led to the publication of the Better Births report in February 2016. This is the fifth publication of data from MSDS v2.0 and data from 2019-20 onwards is not directly comparable to data from previous years. This publication shows the number of HES delivery episodes during the period, with a number of breakdowns including by method of onset of labour, delivery method and place of delivery. It also shows the number of MSDS deliveries recorded during the period, with a breakdown for the mother's smoking status at the booking appointment by age group. It also provides counts of live born term babies with breakdowns for the general condition of newborns (via Apgar scores), skin-to-skin contact and baby's first feed type - all immediately after birth. There is also data available in a separate file on breastfeeding at 6 to 8 weeks. For the first time information on 'Smoking at Time of Delivery' has been presented using annual data from the MSDS. This includes national data broken down by maternal age, ethnicity and deprivation. From 2025/2026, MSDS will become the official source of 'Smoking at Time of Delivery' information and will replace the historic 'Smoking at Time of Delivery' data which is to become retired. We are currently undergoing dual collection and reporting on a quarterly basis for 2024/25 to help users compare information from the two sources. We are working with data submitters to help reconcile any discrepancies at a local level before any close down activities begin. A link to the dual reporting in the SATOD publication series can be found in the links below. Information on how all measures are constructed can be found in the HES Metadata and MSDS Metadata files provided below. In this publication we have also included an interactive Power BI dashboard to enable users to explore key NHS Maternity Statistics measures. The purpose of this publication is to inform and support strategic and policy-led processes for the benefit of patient care. This report will also be of interest to researchers, journalists and members of the public interested in NHS hospital activity in England. Any feedback on this publication or dashboard can be provided to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk, under the subject “NHS Maternity Statistics”.