Ed Humpherson to Sir Andrew Watson: Review of Coventry population estimates

Let’s just remind ourselves about what’s been going on in Coventry.

The Office for National Statistics came up with some figures that detailed the City’s population was going to grow at twice the rate of other towns in the County.  The result of this was the City Council needed to find land for the building of 1000s of new houses and where did they choose, green belt land around the City. We couldn’t believe it and neither could our member Merle Gering. So he set about gathering data that systematically debunked the ONS findings and showed that the anticipated growth was a myth and we told the ONS so. After being basically ignored by the ONS we presented Merle’s work to the UK Statistics Authority, the regulator of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and asked them to review the latter’s work. We were backed by Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, and five cross party MPs and the UKSA agreed to undertake a review.

Here is the letter from Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation, to our Chairman Andrew Watson regarding the UKSA’s findings.