Welcome to the UK Data Service

Read the full stories in our January 2026 newsletter. Looking ahead to spring, we’ll be holding our Crime Surveys User Conference 2026 in March, as well as a host of other training workshops and webinars. We’ve also launched our UK Data Service Dissertation Award 2025-26, which recognises undergraduate social science dissertations that include excellent reuse of data.

We have published our UK Data Service Annual Report 2024–25 for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, marking the first year of delivery under our new ESRC funding award. The report reflects a year focused on strengthening foundations: improving services, investing in infrastructure, and supporting researchers through faster access to data, new platforms, and enhanced training and engagement.

Do you use UK Data Service surveys to research family finances? Submissions are now open for the Family Finance Surveys User Conference 2026. This free annual conference is organised by the UK Data Service in collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics. Submission deadline is Wednesday 11 March.

This new Impact Case Study looks at the Gender Equality Index UK: the first index to systematically measure and analyse the socioeconomic outcomes of women and men across all 372 local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Professor Alison Park, from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), discusses the importance of UK social science data infrastructures and outlines some of the opportunities and challenges they face.

This year, the UK Data Service reached an incredible milestone — over 10,000 data collections are now discoverable through our Data Catalogue. But what is the journey to this milestone? What does it matter? And how does it set the stage for the next chapter of data innovation and impact?

Watch and learn all the latest data skills from our free webinars, training and video tutorials.

Researchers working remotely are asking: “Is it possible to access safeguarded Special Licence or Secure Access data from home?". Whether you are already accessing such data at your institution, or you are just preparing an application, you may be wondering if homeworking is an option for your project.

This free workshop introduces the fundamentals of natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis, using Reddit as a case study for social media research. We will explore the ethical and legal considerations of working with publicly available online data and discuss best practices for responsible and reproducible research.