Recommendation F258: Role of the Health and Social Care Information Centre
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
The Information Centre should continue to develop and maintain learning, standards and consensus with regard to information methodologies, with particular reference to comparative performance statistics.
In brief (written by this site)
In commentary published in February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England recorded the recommendation as superseded, referring to their response to recommendation 252 (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the government had originally accepted the recommendation and that the Health and Social Care Information Centre kept its indicator methodologies under regular review (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024).
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
Accepted.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre publishes, and keeps under regular review, the methodologies used for the calculation of national indicators and statistics.
To support this function the Health and Social Care Information Centre:
• has introduced an assurance process for indicators on behalf of the Quality Information Committee (a subcommittee of the National Quality Board). This process ensures that indicators are fit for purpose and is available as a service for any organisation to use. The Health and Social Care Information Centre keeps indicators under review to ensure that, where improvements or quality issues are identified, learning is maintained and lessons implemented;
• adheres to principle four the Code of Practice for Official Statistics126 (UK Statistics Authority, January 2009) which states, ‘Statistical methods should be consistent with scientific principles and internationally recognised best practices, and be fully documented. Quality should be monitored and assured taking account of internationally agreed practices’; and
• publishes additional contextual data to help people use or interpret the data it publishes, including, for example, information about palliative care coding in the context of the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator.
How this response relates to the recommendation
Site note: This is volume two of "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777-II), the government's response to the Inquiry's 290 recommendations, published by the Department of Health on GOV.UK on 19 November 2013 and dated to that day here. The PDF the row links to is the accessible edition, whose title page reads "January 2014". The Department of Health has been the Department of Health and Social Care since January 2018. The volume says it includes accounts from each of the national organisations the recommendations name, but it does not mark which passage each organisation wrote, so every row is filed under the Department that published it.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
Government responded via "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (2014), a single document covering all 290 recommendations with a blanket acceptance. Individual recommendation responses were not broken out.
Delivery
DHSC and NHS England state no delivery position (27 February 2026)
Please see our response to recommendation 252 above.
Site note: DHSC and NHS England's own account of progress, supplied to the Thirlwall Inquiry in September 2024 and printed in the Inquiry legal team's Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025, published 27 February 2026). It is not a finding of the Inquiry. Their reviewed extent of implementation reads “Superseded”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 258, PDF page 563.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
The Health and Social Care Information Centre has been working with Health Education England regarding the implications for the new workforce strategy (Skill and Capabilities). As a result, the National Information Board Framework will make specific proposals about the need for workforce strategies to address informatics skills and capabilities.
Site note: This is the supporting annex published on 11 February 2015 with "Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries" (Cm 9009), attached to the GOV.UK page as "Culture change in the NHS supporting annex". The annex has no title page; that title is GOV.UK's and the PDF's own. Its table has four columns (No., Recommendation, Hard Truths Government response, Progress update), and the row carries the Progress update cell. No column says which organisation wrote an update, so the row is filed under the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care), which published it.
Site note: The Inquiry addressed this recommendation to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (later NHS Digital), not to the Department of Health. The annex gives this update in the Department's publication and does not say who wrote it, so the row is the Department's report of the progress made on it.
What other bodies have found
In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.
Thirlwall Inquiry legal team (15 May 2024)
This recommendation was accepted by the Government.
In the January 2014 Hard Truthers report, the Government said that the Health and Social Care Information Centre published and kept under regular reviews its methodologies. It would adhere to principle four of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and publish additional contextual data to help people use or interpret the data it published.
Site note: The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team's own notes on implementation, from its Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024). The review does not colour its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green; it leaves the cell uncoloured where a recommendation was rejected, where evidence of implementation was insufficient, or where steps had been taken but implementation was not yet complete. Table row: section 16.2 No. 258, PDF page 518.
Source
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health and Social Care
Response, delivery statement - DHSC and NHS England
Delivery statement - Thirlwall Inquiry legal team
Finding