[3] ONS produces and publishes a wide range of the information about the United Kingdom that can be used for social and economic policy-making as well as painting a portrait of the country as its population evolves over time.

The complexity and degree and speed of change in the society, combined with the challenge of measuring some of these (e.g. in relation to longevity, migration or illness patterns or fine movements in inflation or other aspects of national accounts) give rise to periodic debates about some of its indicators and portrayals.

[10] The National Statistician would be directly accountable to Parliament through a more widely constituted independent governing Statistics Board.

[11] The ONS would be a non-ministerial government department so that the staff, including the Director, would remain as civil servants but without being under direct ministerial control.

The details of the plans for independence were considered in Parliament during the 2006/2007 session and resulted in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

[16] On 7 February 2008, following the first meeting of the shadow board, it was announced that it would be known as the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA).

Since its establishment, ONS has had five Directors: professor Tim Holt; Len Cook; Karen Dunnell; Jil Matheson; and, from October 2012, Glen Watson.

John Pullinger replaced Jil Matheson as National Statistician (and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority) in July 2014.

Pullinger retired in June 2019 and in October 2019 professor Sir Ian Diamond assumed the role of National Statistician.

[23] The Family Records Centre in Myddelton Street in Islington, London, moved to the National Archives in Kew in 2008.

These risks were stated to derive from the fact that few of the experienced staff working in these highly technical areas were expected to relocate to Newport, resulting in a substantial loss of expertise and a consequent threat to the continued quality of the statistics.

[33] The project is one of several that led the Information Commissioner to warn that there is a danger of the country "sleepwalking" into a surveillance society.

[37] Following the review, the then-Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, criticised the ONS for being "out of touch".

[38] In 2019, the ONS admitted that EU migration to the UK may have been underestimated due to methodology of the International Passenger Survey.