Key developments across the partnership

Through our investment in new linked datasets, our strengthened partnerships with key government departments, and the funding of research with high potential for policy impact, this year we have built a strong foundation for our new five-year funding period. Alongside our continued commitment to public engagement throughout our programme, ADR UK continues to drive the secure use of public-sector data in the public good.
Dr Emma Gordon

Director of ADR UK and ADR England

Investing in research that changes lives

Read on to hear about the key developments for our UK-wide projects, or head down this page to visit developments by national partner.

This year, 17 more academics joined our Fellowship programme, the largest cohort since ADR UK was established in 2018. Projects will respond to challenges across the policy spectrum, including the pay gap experienced by unpaid carers, changes to special educational needs support, and tackling violence against women and girls.

22 PhD students using ADR UK flagship datasets are also currently being directly supported by ADR UK, with funding for a new cohort of 30 PhD students due to be allocated to Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training partnerships later this year.

These fellows and PhD students are bringing their passion and expertise to ADR UK’s flagship linked datasets, often with the unique opportunity to access datasets for the first time.

Our collection of ‘Data Explained’ articles allows these researchers at the forefront of administrative data use to share their learnings and code with the wider researcher network. While our regularly published Data Insights continue to offer a publicly available record of key findings for policy and practice.

Through our use of Trusted Research Environments, a growing number of researchers beyond those directly funded by ADR UK are also utilising our rich datasets for public good projects.

Expanding our flagship dataset collection

During this period, we are delighted to have funded and facilitated new and updated flagship datasets across all four national partners, with our current total standing at 24.

Highlights include the launch of RAPID: Population interactions with employment, benefits and pensions - UK, a population-based dataset created from administrative records held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

RAPID enables analysis of month-on-month activities and the transitions between employment and benefits, providing the ability to analyse populations to low levels of geography by age, sex and derived economic activity in each month. Projects using this new resource begin in the autumn of 2026.

Our support has also continued for the world-leading established dataset, LEO (Longitudinal Education Outcomes), hosted by the Office for National Statistics with facilitation by ADR UK. The dataset contains de-identified information on the characteristics, education, employment, benefits, and earnings of members of the British public. LEO provides transformative insight and evidence on the longer-term labour market outcomes and educational pathways of around 38 million individuals. This year we were delighted to have launched versions of this dataset based on records from Northern Ireland and Scotland, expanding research potential into other UK nations.

We have also expanded our synthetic data provision to support researchers to explore and test datasets safely prior to use. ADR UK continues to lead the way in utilising synthetic data, including this year’s SynthSprint, which brought researchers together to rapidly test data and potential projects through synthetic data use.

Formalising partnerships with our government data partners

Our evaluation identified that the greatest societal and financial benefits from administrative data research are often achieved when data generated by one government department or public service is linked to data from others. Linking data surfaces new insights that can otherwise remain hidden.

This year as we move into our new funding period, we have formalised new data owner partnerships with five UK government departments:

Department for Education
Department for Health and Social Care
Department for Work and Pensions
His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs
Ministry of Justice

This will allow ADR UK to scale up the benefits of the individual relationships we have developed with these departments over time, and to further streamline access to linked data.

Discover key developments from our national partnerships this year:

About ADR UK

ADR UK is made up of four national partnerships – ADR England, ADR Northern Ireland, ADR Scotland and ADR Wales, alongside the Office for National Statistics as a UK-wide data access provider. The partnership is coordinated by a Strategic Hub based in the Economic and Social Research Council.

This structure allows each UK nation to have a dedicated trusted research environment and local expertise focusing on its national policy needs, while also enabling UK-wide coordination, learning and collaboration.

Each ADR UK partner works closely with researchers from academic institutions and other research bodies, as well as government data owners and policymakers, to support research that fills evidence gaps and informs policy and practice.

By connecting academia and government we ensure that insights from administrative data research can be used to improve lives, drive economic growth and deliver data-driven change.