Recommendation F261: Information standards
From Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, published 6 February 2013.
Recommendation
The Information Centre should be enabled to undertake more detailed statistical analysis of its own than currently appears to be the case.
In brief (written by this site)
In September 2024 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published in February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England recorded the recommendation as superseded, referring to their response to an earlier recommendation (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). In May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted that the government had accepted the recommendation and recounted its prior updates on high-level data analysis (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024). The department had reported in February 2015 that the Health and Social Care Information Centre was reviewing its publications strategy to produce more thematic reports, following its initial acceptance in November 2013 (Department of Health response, Nov 2013; Department of Health, Feb 2015).
Sources
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 collects and publishes national data and statistical information in health and social care as required by the The Health and Social Care Act 2012. In doing so, the Health and Social Care Information Centre also has a role in undertaking high level analysis of data, where appropriate, to support the interpretation of information prior to its publication. For example in the preparation of the Summary Hospital- level Mortality Indicator. This is a useful function and the Health and Social Care Information Centre will continue to do this wherever appropriate.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre will also ensure that data which can be interpreted locally is available and in a format that would allow individual organisations to undertake that analysis. The Health and Social Care Information Centre does not provide local level interpretative analysis, rather it will continue to ensure that such information is available so that it can be used by local trusts and data intermediaries to add value by presenting the data in ways that are most useful to specific local audiences. This is in line with the Government’s Information Strategy, The Power of Information (Department of Health, May 2012).
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. 261, PDF page 564-565.
Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (11 February 2015)
The Health and Social Care Information Centre is currently reviewing its publications strategy to ensure that its outputs are providing relevant and useful statistics and analyses for customers and the public. As part of this review, it has started to produce more thematic reports, for example regarding health and care services for older people, which was published in June 2014.
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 Truths Report, the Government said that Health and Social Care Information had a role in undertaking high level analysis of data to support the interpretation of information prior to its publication, but that it would not prove local-level interpretative analysis.
In the February 2015 Culture Change report, the Government said that the Health and Social Care Information Centre was reviewing its publications strategy to ensure that its outputs were providing relevant and useful statistics and analyses for customers and the public.
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. 261, PDF page 519.
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