Secure research-data infrastructure for diagnosing the growth problem is going backwards

The ONS Integrated Data Service, intended as the cross-government platform for linked microdata, was red-rated in March 2025, stopped accepting external research applications in July 2025, and lost its £53m annual budget from March 2026 at the Spending Review. The legacy Secure Research Service continues indefinitely, and it is the ageing system the IDS was meant to replace. Researchers still cannot readily link firm-level tax, trade and ownership data. ADR UK covers administrative data in part and does not solve the business-data linkage problem.

Every competing diagnosis of the productivity slowdown depends on linked firm-level microdata. The platform is being dismantled mid-crisis, which leaves policy running on downgraded OBR aggregates rather than evidence about which firms, sectors and places are stuck.

A funded successor secure-access platform with statutory service standards for accreditation turnaround and uptime, prioritising linked HMRC, Companies House and ONS business microdata, governed jointly with the research community.

// State-led: Instrument: Spending Review funding for successor platform plus statutory service standards; HMRC data access is government-gated.

The linked-microdata platform lost its £53m budget in March 2026 and stopped taking applications, so preservation is a this-year problem.