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

The ONS Integrated Data Service, the intended cross-government platform for linked microdata, was red-rated in March 2025, stopped accepting external research applications in July 2025, and lost its £53m/yr budget from March 2026 at the Spending Review. The legacy Secure Research Service continues 'indefinitely' but is the ageing system IDS was meant to replace. Researchers still cannot readily link firm-level tax, trade and ownership data (the raw material of productivity diagnosis). ADR UK partially covers administrative data but not the business-data linkage problem.

Every competing diagnosis of the productivity slowdown depends on linked firm-level microdata. The UK is dismantling its data platform mid-crisis, leaving 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 (accreditation turnaround times, uptime) prioritising linked HMRC–Companies House–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 for diagnosing productivity lost its £53m budget in March 2026 and stopped taking applications, so dismantling is happening now, making preservation urgent this year.