Catalogue description Office for National Statistics and predecessors: Business Statistics Office: Registered Papers and Digital Files

References for born-digital records are automatically generated and display a 'Z' after a forward slash, which distinguish them from traditional references allocated to paper and digitised records.

The Business Statistics Office (BSO) was formed in the Board of Trade Statistics Division in January 1969 by expanding the then Census Office which had focussed almost entirely on the censuses of production and distribution. The creation of BSO followed a reorganisation of government statistics conducted by Sir Claus Moser, the then head of the Central Statistical Office. The reorganisation was in response to a report by the Estimates Committee of the House of Commons which also led to the creation of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS). The role of the BSO was to be a centralised system of collecting information from industry irrespective of which government department required the information.

The BSO was responsible for a new system of integrated monthly, quarterly, annual, and less frequent industrial statistics for use by industry as well as government in addition to the building and maintenance of a central register of businesses. Originally based in Eastcote, Middlesex, the BSO was transferred to Newport, Gwent in the early 1970s as part of a general dispersal of government functions out of the London area.

Responsibility for the BSO passed through a number of government departments but the Office continued with the same function of collecting business statistics. In October 1970 it became part of the newly formed Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) when the Board of Trade was merged with the Ministry of Technology to create a new department. In 1974 it remained with the Department of Industry, when the DTI was split. Although staffed and run under the department, the BSO was directed by an interdepartmental committee under the chairmanship of the Director of the Central Statistical Office.

In 1985 the DTI was reformed but on 31st July 1989 the functions of the BSO were transferred from DTI to the Central Statistical Office (CSO) as part of another reorganisation of government statistical services (the"Pickford" review). This reorganisation saw the expansion of the CSO to gain responsibility for collecting business statistics in addition to the compilation of trade and financial statistics and responsibility for the retail prices index and family expenditure survey.

On 1 April 1996 CSO and OPCS merged to form the Office for National Statistics.